You Don’t Have to Know Your "Thing" Yet

We keep asking girls to define themselves before they’ve had enough time to meet themselves.

At some point, growing up became a branding exercise.

School wants to know what you plan to study. College applications want a convincing story about who you are. Social media would like an aesthetic, a recognizable personality and preferably one interest you can post about repeatedly without confusing the algorithm.

Even the smallest introductions have started to feel strangely official.

What music do you listen to? What’s your style? What do you want to do after graduation? What kind of person are you?

You can’t just like a song anymore. It belongs to an era. An outfit becomes a core. Reading three books apparently makes you a book girl, and now you need a special lamp.

I understand the appeal. It feels good when the pieces match. There is comfort in looking at your room, your clothes, your playlists and your future plans and thinking, Yes. This is me.

The problem is that you will probably wake up one morning and dislike half of it.

That doesn’t mean you were pretending before. It means you changed.

Knowing yourself and being easy to describe are not the same thing. We keep treating them as if they are.

A girl who has always wanted to become a doctor is considered focused. A girl who wanted to be a doctor, then a photographer, then briefly considered marine biology after watching one excellent documentary is treated as if someone needs to intervene.

She may simply be interested in the world.

Teenage girls are allowed so little room to be inconsistent. Change your clothes and someone says you’re trying too hard. Find new friends and people decide you’ve become different. Admit you don’t want the future you planned at thirteen and suddenly everyone needs an explanation.

Of course you’re different. You’re supposed to be.

You’re reading things you hadn’t read before. You’re meeting people who grew up differently from you. You’re discovering that some adults don’t know what they’re talking about, which is an important and occasionally horrifying milestone.

The person making the decision keeps changing. The decision should be allowed to change with her.

Some girls know what they want early, and I love that for them. There is something beautiful about watching someone recognize her place in the world and move toward it.

This article is for everyone else.

The girl with six abandoned hobbies and a drawer full of supplies from businesses that never opened. The girl who is good at several things but hasn’t fallen in love with one. The one who has a very detailed plan for her future on Monday and would prefer not to discuss it by Thursday.

You aren’t failing to find yourself.

You’re still gathering material.

You can learn more from trying one thing badly than from spending six months wondering whether it might be your calling. Join the club. Take the strange elective. Learn enough guitar to discover that your fingers hurt and you’d rather make playlists. Write the first chapter and never write the second. Try out for something you may not get.

Not every interest needs to become a talent. Not every talent needs to become a career. Some things can enter your life, entertain you for one summer and leave behind a box of beads.

We’ve become so used to turning interests into identities that we forget how enjoyable it is to do something without making it part of our public story.

You can paint without becoming an artist. You can love makeup without starting a beauty account. You can write privately. You can know an unreasonable amount about old Hollywood, sharks, train stations or why certain songs sound better in the car.

An interest doesn’t need to prove its value by becoming useful.

It may lead somewhere. It may not.

Years later, the random things often make more sense. The girl who kept rearranging her room realizes she loves creating spaces. The friend who always knew what to say during an argument becomes interested in psychology. Someone who hated being photographed but loved planning every shot discovers she would rather work behind the camera.

Sometimes your thing is hiding underneath the thing.

Maybe you don’t love the school paper. You love asking questions. Maybe fashion isn’t the whole interest. You notice details and understand how people use clothes to say something before they speak.

That thread is usually more interesting than a job title.

You also may have several threads. They may cross, separate and return years later when you finally have a reason to use them together. Life is long enough to contain more than one version of you.

Adults do this constantly. They change careers, move across the country, start businesses, cut their hair and announce that they are entering a new chapter. We call it reinvention.

A sixteen-year-old changes her mind twice and gets called indecisive.

That seems unfair.

You will eventually have to choose things. A class. A major. A job. Choosing matters, but it isn’t the same as signing a lifelong contract with the person you are today.

Make the best decision you can with the information you have. Stay curious enough to notice when new information arrives.

You don’t need a perfect answer when someone asks what you want to do with your life. Give them the current answer. The one that fits today.

You can update it later.

Everyone does.