I’m bored to tears at work these days. But it’s like that every summer, companies just don’t book training during vacation time. So every summer I sit in a cubicle, gazing outside, wondering what else I could do with my life. Luckily, when I have the “if I could go back” discussion in my head, I find I wouldn’t change all that much.

Sometimes I think I should have stuck with film making. But then I remember getting out of film school at 20, and feeling very strongly that I needed some more formal education in something, anything. I chose psychology because I felt it would apply to anything I might want to do.

Then I wonder whether I should have stuck with Psych, although the idea was never really to become a shrink. And when I wonder about that, I remember the time I spent counselling “at risk” youths, and how many tears I shed that summer, which was my first contact with real suffering. How I didn’t really want to grow a shell and become able to “deal with it”. I truly have an enormous amount of respect for those who dedicate their lives to alleviating the suffering of others.

The biology degree I did afterwards is probably the hardest thing to justify to myself. Would I be happier had I spent those years doing something else? By then I knew I wanted to teach, and I felt I needed to be an expert at something - anything - if I was to teach it. Biotechnology was fascinating, and in my world view it was highly employable. If nothing else, doing that degree allowed me to work and study in Sweden for a while.

Sometimes I think being an artist would have been the happiest life, but then I know I crave the security of a steady job. Sometimes I think if I could go back I’d spend more time practising music and drawing, so that I’d eventually be talented enough to earn a living from it.

It used to bother me that my CV was a real mosaic, that my interests had been all over the place. I envied those who right from square one, had a clear idea of where they were going. But those are rare individuals. I try to forgive myself past choices by remembering where I was when I made them. I try to remember that my mosaic life simply means I could be happy doing many different things. And I actually succeed in believing that.