In six months, Gwen Johnston turns thirty, and when she does, she vows she'll have her life together. She'll no longer be jumping from one job to another, from one relationship to the next. A new, more mature, Gwen will have emerged. She's giving he...
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My laptop has approximately five hundred tabs open, and I'm no closer to making a decision. Some of them are grants and applications for scholarships for mature students to graphic design schools—anywhere from a one year to a four-year course. I've clicked through and submitted dozens of those. Good to keep my options open. Who knows? One might be exactly what I need.
Other tabs are solo backpacking trips through Europe at various budgeting levels. The countries with good exchange rates have questionable security for a single woman traveling alone, and the ones with reasonable risk are more expensive than I can afford for the six months I want to go. My temptation is to blow all my money on a plane ticket and just see how things turn out. A voice of reason might be needed.
I grab my phone off the kitchen island, and I call my older sister Paige. She's probably getting sick of hearing from me, but she's the only truly sensible person I know. Most of my friends are like me.
"Paige," I say. "Everything I find is either too expensive or too dangerous."
"Australia?" she suggests. "Or just take whatever graphic design school you get accepted to. You can live on the edge that way, Gwen. You don't have to travel. I know I'm selling the house, but you've still got options. Realistic options."
"I'm leaving design school up to fate. I've applied to a bunch of places, and if I get a scholarship, I'll go when I'm done traveling. Six months from now. When I'm thirty."
"Thirty is a very arbitrary number," Paige says. "It doesn't have to mean anything."
"Uh, both you and Mom seem to think it means a lot." I twist a lock of long brown hair around my finger and tuck my feet into the rung of the barstool while I click through the options on the screen. "I'll spend the next six months getting the last of my youth out of my system. Then poof. At thirty, I'll be ready for maturity, responsibility, and a full time, stable job." Not that I haven't had some of those things, it's just that they never stick. Jobs, boyfriends, even places to live.
I did manage to get a supply management degree before I left college, but that was mostly because my sister didn't believe I was capable of finishing. She chided me for picking it, and honestly, she wasn't completely wrong. Graphic design, even back then, might have been the smarter choice. But I didn't want my art to be my job. I used it for stress release, and I didn't want it to become stressful.
"Australia?" she says again, and I can tell the way she says it that she's distracted.
"The flights are horrendously expensive right now." I stare at the white kitchen cupboards and wonder why my sister is so hell bent on neutrals for her house. The kitchen is white and gray, and almost every other room in her house is some bland version of white or grey or light blue. A splash of color wouldn't kill her. But I know better than to make unapproved changes to the décor, especially since it's due to go on the market soon.
"Canada!" Ash, my sister's British partner, calls in the background. "I've always fancied Canada. Looks lovely."
"Canada?" Paige says, and I can hear the tinges of disapproval in her voice.
