A Journey Through Time

Chapter 24 ~ Fear & Old Feelings

Everyone talks about graduation but nobody talks about the day after, or even the week after. The stillness and quietness, both peaceful and nerve wracking. The pressure and expectations to be something more, to accomplish something great when your whole life is a blank slate. It feels like another day, but at the same time, the first day of your real life. Filled with both freedom and pain.

It's all fear. All of it. Getting bombarded with conflicting information. Not knowing which way to turn. Not truly understanding how the world really works. It feels like I literally don't know anything even though I have a whole degree. Was I wasting years of my life just to end up in the same place I was before?

I'm scared of wasting more years of my life. I'm scared of being miserable. I'm scared that my work won't amount to anything. Hours of labor and stress for nothing. Pressured to make a lot of money. Scared to take any path laid out in front of me. Scared that one path will lead me to a dead end like this one has. Scared of failure. Paralyzed by fear.

I'm trying to take action by following the process my school has given me in their career resource guide. But more than anything, the world just feels like a tangled mess of people and relationships and I don't know where my place is in it. No path is clear. And I'm just stuck in a place of limbo.

Should I literally try any and everything? I'm too cluttered to have my eyes set on a specific path. But I know so many people that do have a specific path they want to follow. I'm so used to having choices be made for me or just having a more transparent path than the one I have now. Right now my life feels incomplete. I'm in this state of desperation I told myself I didn't want to be in. I just wish I really new how this big world works. How do you survive in a world like this? How do you find peace and security? How do you strategically make moves when it seems like you don't have control of anything?

I know what skills, interests, and experience I have. I know what I can do when given the opportunity. I've been finding these resources that may help me be more proactive in this whole process. I'm gonna make sure I do this the right way. I don't want to waste my time anymore.

I can't predict the future. All I can control is now. We can create goals for ourselves. We can try to strive towards reaching some kind of accomplishment in a month. But what if we can't reach it? What if reaching it is out of our control? Then should we even establish it as a goal or expectation in the first place? What if the outcome is not within reach?

I don't even know what to expect. I end up expecting the worst naturally. But I know I should probably be more optimistic. More grateful.

I'm not always going to get what I want. I need to be content with what I have right now WHILE also striving for better.