Life's too short to be spend it doing the wrong thing

Ever since I was a kid, I've always wanted to be an actor. Unfortunately that is not a viable career option in my country, partly due to the fact that entertainment industry is not very popular here so it would be next to impossible to make a living as an actor. But in my opinion it's also due to the fact that people here are very cynical and simply do not think that things like acting or any other form of performing art are worth while and are downright silly. 

"Haha, he actually want to express himself" 

Everybody acts like they are on a clock to live their life, which technically is true, but they take it to a whole new level with every step in life having a deadline. Not being able to meet that deadline would have catastrophic results on your future, so everybody has the same mentality of quickly rushing through life without leaving even a little bit of time for self discovery. You go to school, you graduate, immediately go to a university, graduate from there, go to the army (military service is mandatory in this country), come back, find a job, get married (and in most cases this step doesn't include falling in love, but more on that later), have kids, work for the next 40 years, retire and then just die. There are no steps that include you asking yourself "what do I want to do in life?", being happy or even content with what you will be doing for the rest of your life is not included into the equation and the worst part is not that people are OK with that, but that it would never even occur to them to question this if they weren't. All that matters is that you do what is expected of you.

"Would you kindly?"

The Academy that I went to didn't have a single class that was be interesting to me. I tried my hardest to pay attention during those classes but no matter how hard I tried my mind would still drift off to a cartoon I started watching the day before. I didn't care about accounting, about the difference between economic shift and movement or even how oil rigs work (my specialty was industrial organization and management). I tried asking some of my classmates whether they found all of these things interesting or was it just me. Incredibly they all had the same answer that this information would prove very useful to them in the future when they are trying to find a job and have financial security. And there is nothing wrong with that. What was incredible to me was that their interest in these subjects played absolutely no role, they were like robots filling themselves with information to accomplish their future goal. They didn't even care what kind of a job they got afterwards as long as it was the one that paid a lot. They had no dreams or ambitions other than "imma make a shit ton of money and buy stuff with it" (try reading that with a southern accent). One of the questions that I would ask them was "What did you want to be when you were a kid?" because clearly nobody spends their childhood dreaming of sitting in an office doing paperwork which was exactly where we were all heading. This was the question that confused them the most, a lot of them didn't remember (and didn't care that they didn't remember), but some of them suddenly got very defensive and told me to grow up. But before they got defensive, just for half a second, they all flashed this startled expression mixed with doubt, the kind you get when suddenly can't find your wallet in your back pocket only to realize a second later that you put it in your jacket five minutes ago. It's like that question somehow woke up their inner child and that child was terrified of where he was. This is what's sad about this country and it's society, in here growing up means to stop dreaming and become a robot who has to fulfill his programming before he drops dead. During the time I've spent in that Academy I have accomplished nothing other than waste a lot of money and 4 years of my life. Time I could have spent taking acting classes, shooting YouTube videos, working on my improvisation, finding people who share my passion and etc.

"Hm... I wonder what I should build next in Minecraft..." 

This is exactly the type of thinking that has resulted in me having a job that I promised myself as a kid I would never get (I don't want to go into specifics like where I work or what position). This job has nothing to do with economics, oil industry, geology or any other things that I pretended to study back in the Academy. I only was able to get it because my love for video games and animation has resulted in me speaking fluent English which is a very marketable skill in this country. Day after day I come to work at the same office in the basement of a large building, sit at my desk, answer phone calls and do paperwork. Then I have lunch and go straight back to doing more paperwork. I go home, go to sleep only to repeat the whole process the next day. I am not saying that this is a bad job to have: I've got a good salary, reasonable hours (most of the time), medical insurance, paid vacation, I am able to provide for my family, my current boss and supervisor are both great and so on. In today's competitive market I am very lucky to even have a job, let alone one that's got dental. But still this type of job never fills you with a sense of accomplishment, because at the end of the day a sorted pile of paper isn't exactly something to be proud of. 

Isn't it beautiful? 

22 is a pretty early age to come to a realization like this, but life is too short to spend it doing something so unfulfilling, always wondering what would have been. But I am not giving up, one day I will move far away from here and have a fresh start. I don't care how long it takes me or even if I end up waiting tables somewhere in Quebec, it's my life and I have already wasted too much of it doing things just because other people expected them of me.