I should know what I want to do with my life by now.
I work at the bank six days a week. I should be grateful. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of Ghanaian youths out there who would love to be in my position. I make enough to get by. My wife is content with my income. We don’t have kids yet, but if we do, I know everything will be fine, especially because she also has her own business.
People talk about work and happiness, but I don’t know what that feels like. I sit in an air-conditioned office all day, count bundles of money, meet all kinds of beautiful people, and drive a nice car. But waking up every morning to go to work feels like swallowing a hard pill. It is painful. It is suffocating. And I don’t even know how to explain it.
When I tell my best friend, Patrick, he says I should be grateful. I could be unemployed and broke. I have something to do, so I should be happy.
But I’m not.
If I’m being honest with myself, I have always, always wanted to make things out of wood.
My mother is long gone, and I try not to resent her for it, but I remember being thirteen and telling her I wanted to do woodwork. She gave me a knock on the head that I still remember today. The pain is gone, but the scars, the repercussions of her actions, still live with me.
I can’t even mention my father because he was never in the picture. But thinking about it now, my mother was a single mother trying to raise me the best way she knew how. She wanted me to be in a good place. She didn’t want to encourage this passion for woodwork and carpentry because, to her, it wasn’t a real profession. She was like every other Ghanaian mother, dreaming of a son who would be a doctor, an engineer, a banker. And I fell right into it.
She’s gone now, but I am the version of the son she wanted.
I’m old enough to make my own choices, but it feels like all the years I could have spent building my craft were wasted on things that don’t serve me. And now, I feel dead inside.
Where do I even start? Who do you talk to about your passion for interior design? How do you teach yourself how to hold a hammer? How to cut wood? All my technical drawing skills have faded. I was too scared to even try, too scared that my mother would hate me for it.
And now, here I am. A grown man. Old enough to make decisions for myself.
Some days, I feel like I should just quit banking altogether. Find an expert in carpentry, woodwork, or interior design and learn from scratch. Just forget about work, forget about money, forget about what anybody thinks. But it takes a lot of courage. And I don’t even know if I will succeed.
Maybe it is just a stupid dream from childhood that I need to let go of.
Or maybe this is my life calling out to me.
When I see furniture, my brain scans it instantly. I see what is wrong with it. When I look at a cupboard, a cabinet, or a shelf, I know exactly how it could look better. I can’t stand the way these so-called interior designers and carpenters create low-quality furniture for people to buy. It is like every piece of wood is calling on me to make it useful.
I know this is my life.
I’m not even forty. I’m young enough to start over. But I could also just continue living the way I am.
I’m in a dilemma.
In every way, in every sense, I am confused. Everything in my life is going well, except this. And this one thing is killing me inside.
That is why I’m here.
Because I think I need therapy for my career.
