If You’re Going That Way, I’m Going This Way

This article was submitted by Daniel Stallings. Read more about him below.

“So when are you getting married? Having kids? Setting up a retirement account? You know you’renotgettinganyyoungerandthisisthegreatesttimeofyourlifeANDWHENIWASYOURAGEWEKNEWHOWTOTAKELIFESERIOUSLYAND — ”

Stop.

Banish the white noise.

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? These incessant questions and prodding comments from prior generations who seem to delight in scripting, choreographing, and proving director’s cut commentary on our lives.

“Well, we were going to have him graduate from the best university and work his way up the corporate ladder, but he ended up dropping out and starting his own business.”

“Well, she’s now the head of a Fortune 500 company, but we wanted her to settle down, find a man, and have too many kids.”

Say it with me, everybody. The peanut gallery is closed. Sweep all those comments out of sight. Bye bye, bullshit.

Our world is changing. Massively. People are now individually connecting with other people on different continents. The traditional job and career opportunities have shaken up from this enormous wave of prospects from the digital world. Even a college degree doesn’t get you what it once did. Our landscape of opportunity is no longer defined by the 1950’s Leave it to Beaver ideal. So why try to force it?

Be whoever you want to be.

I am a college dropout. There I said it. Even among my own generation, I get the weird, wide-eyed stares of disbelief. And I could go into the statistics of successful college dropouts, but they speak for themselves. College wasn’t working for me. The studies weren’t challenging me. I would be reading the same literature I read on my own before high school, and I had a hard time passing essays because I wouldn’t answer the prompts with pre-approved responses. I liked to explore, to imagine, to hypothesize, to invent. The system I was in did not allow for that kind of creativity in my education.

So I dropped out. It wasn’t worth the money. I began exploring and working and trying to understand what I wanted. Because a degree is only a piece of paper saying you are trainable. It doesn’t reflect your true passions, your wide variety of interests, your needs as a person. That comes from you.

My passion for detective fiction and the fact I used to create my own murder mystery parties for my birthdays in high school led me to develop my own business creating interactive mystery entertainment for clients. As of writing this article, I am currently working on my eighth production, a fully-cast, Victorian-themed garden party mystery tea, and I have only been in business a year! I have found a world where I can be my authentic self, a place of my own to be as wild and creative as possible.

Am I rich and famous? No. But I’m happy. And my business grows with each production.

Learn to trust yourself. Learn to understand what you want and not feel confined to conform. Explore. Create. Invent. Design. Life is for living. Not for sliding Square Peg A into Square Hole B. If you want to get that degree, do it! If you want to start a family, by all means! If you want to start your own business, take the plunge! As long as you are following your desires and instincts and not just doing it because “that’s the way things should go.”

The world is changing. Don’t get left behind. Embrace it.

Because while they’re all going that way, we’ll be blazing a trail this way! Who’s with me?

Daniel Stallings is a working mystery writer who owns and operates Master Mystery Productions, a company specializing in creating interactive mystery entertainment. He can be found buried nose-deep into an Agatha Christie novel somewhere in the barren wilds of the Mojave Desert, where his ideal workspace would include a suspicious bloodstain, a fistful of missing emeralds, and a sneak-thief butler with shifty eyes. You can peruse his mysterious wares on Facebook at Master Mystery Productions or at mastermysteryproductions.wordpress.com.