This Veteran’s Day weekend I headed to Las Vegas to visit my mom who has been living and teaching out there for the past 2 years. She’s been really frustrated that she cannot find a teaching job in New York (understandably so, she has a masters degree and 10+ years of teaching under her belt) so in the fall of 2010 she moved out there to teach high school English. She experienced the same job problem this summer so she’s back out there for her second, but probably final year.

I mostly like going out there just to visit my mom since she misses the family so much while she’s out there. But she does live in one of America’s largest cities for tourism, so when I go out there we always try to visit the strip and go to a casino or two. Las Vegas isn’t my type of city. The first problem is I don’t gamble, and that is really what Las Vegas is all about. But Las Vegas has a kind of sleazy feel about it. People are awake at all hours of the day, the casino’s are poorly lit and people smoke indoors. Not to mention all the Casino’s on the strip are so bizarre, there is New York, New York with a fake Empire State Building and Paris with a fake Eiffel Tower. It just accentuates how fake Las Vegas is. I mean, the entire city should be a desert not fit for human living, but modern technology has made it possible for half a million people to live there.

But there are some good things about Vegas. You can’t deny looking at The Strip at night isn’t amusing.

This is a picture of Harrah’s and a little bit of Palazzo. I should have used my DerManDar app to get longer landscape photo.

The highlight of the Trip was seeing The Beatles “Love” Cirque De Soleil show at The Mirage. It is rumored to be one of the best shows in Vegas and although it’s the only one I’ve seen, I don’t doubt it. It was a colorful show that played most of the songs from The Beatles “Love” Album that was put out a few years ago. There were dancers, acrobats, amazing roller skaters and many, many more really talented people performing in this show. It is definitely a good show to chose if you are thinking of seeing a performance while in Vegas.

I was only in Las Vegas for three days, so of course I got a stomach bug on Saturday and was bed-ridden for the entire day. But on Sunday we were able to head on over the the Hoover Dam which was a cool sight to see.

After the Hoover Dam we hit this “Fantastic” Flea Market type thing, which consisted of dozens of different shops and booths selling all sorts of things. Anything from $1 jewelry to embroidering, clothes and garden statues.

This was my second trip to Las Vegas and I always feel like I do things much differently than most people that go there. (I didn’t play a single slot machine this visit.) But it was nice to see my mom and we were able to do a few cool things even though I did get sick on the trip.

Just the other day I went to bed and starting thinking about what I actually wanted to do with my life. I realized it is not helpful to pick a profession you want to have, instead you need to create a list of things you want to be able to do in the career you chose. This is my list.

• I want to have a social job where I spend a lot of time collaborating with other people, talking and listening.
• I want to be able organize and create something I care about.
• I want my work/finished product to help other people out in some way.

Bonus points are added to my dream career if it involves:

• Art, Graphic Design, Music, creative things!!
• Technology
• Fun events and meet-ups
• Productive yet still fun and easy-going environment.

That’s all! This was actually a very liberating experience creating this list. Figuring out what you want to do is half of the battle when it comes to finding a career. I think actually obtaining that career is going to be a much longer, harder, more frustrating battle, but I’m ready.

Do you remember the first moment you realized you were too old to do something? As a 22 year old, you might be wondering why on earth I’m talking about being “too old”, but I actually vividly remember the first time I had this realization.

I was sitting at home watching the Winter Olympics, probably the 2006 games? And I was watching figure skating. At this time I was 16 years old and it hit me… I will never be an Olympic figure skater, I was simply too old. The oldest female skaters were probably 23 but most of them had already been to at least one Olympic game before that.

I completely ignored the fact that I get sick of ice skating after about 45 minutes, or the fact that I probably lost the chance of being an Olympic competitor by the age of 10 when I had show zero interest in the profession my entire life. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that I wouldn’t be a professional figure skater in my life, I could have told you that at age 5, I just was bothered by the fact that my age was now playing a role in the reason I could never achieve that goal.

Now I am 22, and I watch people like Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift… people have reached success at a much younger age than me. Teen pop stars are probably a bad example, but I also look at people like Mark Zuckerberg, he had already developed Facebook by 22, geez he’s still only 27.

I went to college thinking I would become a teacher. You can still be considered a “young” teacher at 40, so I was never very concerned about my age or the path I was taking in school to reach my goals. Now that I am out of school and without a teaching job, I have been considering steering towards other professions, specifically careers that may focus on technology, an ever-changing fast paced field, and I worry, did I get involved too late?

I know the answer to this is no. I am still in the “feeling it out” stages of becoming involved in tech. I was fortunate enough to have a 2 month internship at foursquare, so that definitely helped me understand start-ups and web companies faster than if I had just sat at home all day reading blogs and watching videos. But there are kids in high school right now, 16 year olds, that eat tech up like its candy. They are probably hacking away creating cool new programs and already budding their entrepreneur wings, if that makes any sense.  These are the types of kids that Peter Thiel is paying not to go to college.

I will not be an early bloomer. I will not have billions by the time I’m 28. (Let’s be honest… I’ll never have billions!) But I am excited to start showing interests in something new. I might be a little late to the game, but at 22 I know that I still have plenty of time to figure out who I want to be and how I can become that person.

As long as that person isn’t an Olympic figure skater… or Justin Bieber.