It has been on my summer break from university (I am studying part time for a Masters Degree in Spatial Planning) that I have really begun to really take stock of where I am and what I’m doing. The constant day to day pressures of my course and the copious assignments we are required to churn out on an almost weekly basis have occupied the majority of my thoughts over the past year, and previous to that my rollercoaster of a private life had been somewhat all consuming. It is now however that things have slowed down and home life is happy that ‘what I want to be’ has once again reared its ugly head and is questioning my current career choice.

Two years ago I thought I had it sorted. With a Geography Degree to my name, contacts in the field, a level of inherited knowledge and a naturally nosey nature, ‘Planning’ seemed the obvious choice of career. Lately however, its rigidity, its formality and its unyeilding bureaucracy has started to temper with my opinions as to where ‘Planning’ will take me and what it has to offer.

For two years now I have sat in this cold office counting housing completions and writing consultation reports. I read letters written by the same people about the same things and regurgitate what they have said with an official title. My chances of progressing from this broken record of a job is to finish my masters degree and attempt to move on to what else planning has to offer.

Whats worries me is that even this prospect does little to excite me.

For the past few months a need for originality, for creativity, for a chance to excercise the extent of my imagination has been eating away at my sense of reason. I tried to satisfy this unexpected hunger in a small way by giving myself this space in which I can write – a desperate measure to try and keep alive the bit inside me that still ‘thinks’ before the procedure of my professional life diminishes all.

I have really started to crave a job I feel a passion for, a career that accentuates and is an extension of me, a way of making money that doesn’t have me glued to the clock from 9am until 5pm.

If I could ever get a job like this is questionable.

What this job may be is another matter entirely….

So I will sit tight and do the sensible thing, finish my degree and see how far my horizons can be expanded by this one, not so simple task.

I hope it takes me further than here. This blog just isn’t big enough.