I'm staring at a crossroad at the horizon, a crossroad with three paths with different perks and drawbacks. I'm bound by duty to serve my one year mandatory service, but after that, what am I to do?

My main goal is to one day become a graphic designer.
With that in mind, I'm already in a perfect position. Every day I get nuggets of real work experience that is so hard to get in this business. I would be crazy not to appreciate how lucky I am to get to be in this position!

• My first and preferred option is to persuade my superior to create an opening for me as an intern. Having work experience on my CV is well and all, but in the end I'm just serving my mandatory service and if I weren't here to do it, anyone else could've filled the spot - Being able to tell potential future employers that "I'm so good they made an internship opening just for me" would be very impressive, and at the end of the internship I would get a certificate saying I'm a competent graphic designer, which would make for a complete education.

• The second, and most likely outcome is I don't impress my superior enough for him to create an internship opening for me (apparently it's really quite a bother to make). I'd have half a year free, and I'd go back to school, finishing my education. Since I dropped out of the third year of "videregående" school, and since I'm serving my conscription, I've essentially wasted three years in terms of education, and I won't get to apply for a higher education until I finish that. The obvious downside of this is that the education I'd get would be extremely general and uninteresting. Even with a year of military discipline I think it'll be difficult to stay focused throughout the year.

• The third and unconventional option is to apply for officers education. It's a completely different path and it has nothing to do with graphic design. However, having an officers education is a bit prestigious in Norway, and if I were to return to a career as a graphic designer, it may be of drastic help when it comes to getting higher positions (senior graphic designer, art director ...). The officers education also opens for a lot of different and exciting jobs within the Norwegian Armed Forces, but I'm not going to go too much in detail on that.

Thus far, I've concluded these are my options. My personal goal for this year is therefore to minimize idle hours. I want to go back to actively drawing/designing/animating whenever I'm on my computer, and to spend a solid amount of hours in the gym, preparing for an eventual officers education and building up my body as I go. I know that it's impossible to spend every breathing moment productively; one gets tired eventually. I don't want to get burnt out after a hour, day, week, month or year - however I do want to keep wasted hours to a minimum. Maybe I can use the two wildly different goals as a good basis for everyday variation.

On top of that there's a social part. Varying between sitting at my computer alone and working out alone isn't very socially desirable or healthy. There's this whole situation where I have a lot of friends still in touch with eachother, and me being out of loop. I want to get back in the loop, and maybe even build up the crippled relationship between me and my (ex?) friends.


As you can see I have a ton of time, lots of ambitions and only so much motivation. I've no idea if it's even possible but I really really really want to sort my life out before I get out of here!


tl;dr: I'm living in the safe haven that is the air force. I need to sort my life out, get back on my feet and start taking control before my service here ends.