A young guy I know who shelved books graduated college. He’d show up in a Misfits tee shirt to his job. I could create a resume for him. Only he made no move to get a full-time job with his degree. A year later he was still shelving books and that’s when he applied to library school.

I was that young person when I graduated college: a girl who played the Misfits on the radio. I wasn’t enchanted with the road I supposed to go down either. I would’ve been perfectly content andare al’Italia e parlo il mio linguaggio.

Fate had other plans. I had a breakdown, another kind of rite of passage for those of us with broken brains.

The moral and morale of these two stories is that no other person living on Earth–not even our parents–can presume to tell us what our life path should be. Those of us who are creative should be allowed to find our own way. Spending time in the woodshed–like the book guy did–is often necessary to arrive at a better place in life once we’ve gone down the road we choose.

I wrote about woodshedding in one of my first blog entries here. In this regard it’s a valid time-out for everyone, not just those of us with mental illnesses.

It dismays me that from an early age kids are groomed to compete with others in society in order to be successful at traditional jobs their parents deem are the only kind of work to covet.

A society where we can’t count on our elected officials to help out the poor and downtrodden. It’s why I advocate for citizens to become activists: to do the altruistic work we can’t rely on our government to do.

I keep this blog to uplift and inspire readers that a creating a better life for ourselves and others is possible. I hope the two real-life stories I’ve written about today give you hope: in your own life for yourself or for a loved one in their life.

Easily five years ago I wrote: recovery is not a race nor is it a competition. Neither is this how we should live our lives.

Remember: each of us gets to decide the life path we want to go down.

Misfits tee shirt optional.