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When you’re young, you may think you know what you want and how your professional life is going to evolve, but let me tell you the truth: there’s a really good chance that it’s not gonna be what you envisioned.

In fact, your life, personal and professional, is most likely going to take all kinds of twists and turns that you never predicted.

And that’s okay!

But it can be disheartening when you realize that you’re not fulfilled at work.

A woman wrote the story below and got brutally honest about what she now realizes she wants to do with her life.

Let’s take a look!

Got my Masters, got traumatized, now I just want to draw and maybe scan groceries part time. And I’m at peace with that.

“I have a Master of Public Health from NYU.

I have a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition Sciences from a Big 10 public schools.

I have years of experience in program management, community health, grant writing, curriculum design, youth education, and research.

Sounds about right…

On paper I am exactly what the system told me to be.

I did everything right. I got the grades, I got the internships, I got the graduate degree, I networked, I applied, I interviewed, I showed up.

And what did I get for it?

It’s definitely not a dream come true.

A toxic marketing internship that ended badly.

A charter school that hired me on the spot, gave me zero support, let a student get in my face and scream at me, then fired me with a list of fabricated allegations they had never once raised before the termination meeting.

A job market so bleak that I have been applying for months and months and the callbacks I do get feel like a lottery ticket rather than a reflection of my qualifications.

Workplace experiences that have left me with genuine trauma I am still processing.

This is upsetting…

I used to be what I would call a career girl. I genuinely believed in the path. Get the degree, build the resume, climb the ladder, make the impact.

I believed that hard work and credentials would be enough.

I was passionate about public health, about community, about education, about making things better for people who needed it.

I still care about all of those things. But the system that was supposed to channel that care into meaningful work has done nothing but chew me up and spit me out repeatedly.

But she’s really not a career girl at her core.

Here is what I actually am underneath all of it.

I am an artist. I have been making art since I was five years old. Acrylic painting, digital illustration, watercolor, colored pencil portraiture, mehndi and bridal henna.

I am also a writer working on a literary novel.

These are not hobbies I do to decompress from my real life. They ARE my real life. They are the truest thing about me. They are what I do when nobody is asking anything of me and I am just being myself.

She knows what she doesn’t want.

And somewhere between the MPH applications and the toxic workplaces and the job rejections and the fabricated termination allegations and the aunties asking why I am not employed yet after graduation, I lost the thread back to that person completely.

I do not want to manage grants. I do not want to write program evaluations. I do not want to sit in another interview and explain my transferable skills to someone who will ghost me after two rounds.

I do not want to perform professionalism for institutions that do not actually care about me.

But she knows what she does want.

I want to paint. I want to write my novel. I want to do henna at weddings and sell prints online and make things that are beautiful and true.

And I want a part time cashier job or something similarly low stakes to keep the lights on while I do that.

That is it. That is the whole dream now.

And the funniest and saddest part is that this feels more honest and more sustainable than anything the traditional career path has offered me.

It hasn’t gone the way she thought it would…

I spent years being told that wanting to be an artist was impractical. That I needed a real career. That the degree would open doors.

Nobody told me that those doors might lead to rooms that actively make you worse.

Nobody told me that the cost of chasing the career girl identity might be losing yourself entirely in the process.

She’ll never be able to go back to her old mindset.

I am not fully there yet. I am still applying to jobs because I have bills and student loans and a life to sustain.

But something has fundamentally shifted in me and I think this community might understand it better than most.

The grind is not noble. The hustle is not virtuous.

And sometimes the most radical act of self preservation is deciding that a quiet life making art and scanning groceries is worth more than another year of performing ambition for institutions that see you as disposable.”

Take a look at what folks had to say about this on Reddit.

This person weighed in.

Another individual shared their thoughts.

This Reddit user spoke up.

Another reader nailed it.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a restaurant employee who decided to put the staff over customers despite the official policy.

And this reader shared their thoughts.

Well, at least she’s being honest with herself.

That’s more than a lot of folks ever do!

Somehow, it all works out in the end…

It’s hard trying to make a living out there these days…