September 2018

Hi, my name is Keira Johannson and I am fifteen years old. At 15, it’s sometimes hard to know who you are and what you want to do with your life. In the past couple of months, this has been a huge struggle for me. I think my problem is that I put a lot of pressure on myself to be successful and live a “perfect” life. If you know me at all, you’d know that I am a perfectionist and while sometimes it is good to strive for things, there is a time and place where you need to take a step back and re-evaluate how important it is to just go with the flow and live each day as if it’s our last. That is something that I have had to learn and grow to understand. You see, my life isn’t perfect, but over the years, I have created this mentality that everything in my life should be perfect, and in doing so, I have limited myself to the life that I live.

I am about to start grade ten and I guess my goal for this year is to just be present. In this day and age, teenagers tend to worry too much about the future or even hold on to the past. I am one of those teenagers, and I have come to learn that it is so important to just live in the moment. Take each day at a time and everything falls into place as it should.

I am still not sure what I want to do once I am finished with high school. I have the grades and resume to get into a good university and I know that’s the path I want to take but doing what? I’m not sure. I think the pressure that I am feeling is that I want to be able to provide for myself and my future family. And, I guess I am just afraid that I won’t be able to have a career that I love at the same time. My passion is definitely the arts, more specifically; photography, design, and writing. And I am scared that if I pursue a (mostly freelance) career in one of those fields, I won’t be as financially successful as some of my peers that are going to become doctors and lawyers. But the thing is, I don’t necessarily define success as who has the most money. I define success as who is the happiest. So, is it worth it to follow my passion and be happy but have less money? Definitely. I am just going to have to work twice as hard to provide for myself.

“When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “Happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life.” -John Lennon

I am a big John Lennon/Beatles fan and this quote really stands out to me. I’ve struggled with mental health myself and my ultimate goal in life is to just be 100% happy. I know it is an obtainable goal and I believe it should be everybodys.