So. A little update.
If you read my post on Sleep you’d realize that I was in a bit of a pickle regarding my plans for Grad school this coming September.
Without going into too much detail, I decided to defer my admission by a year. I mulled over it for weeks, if not a month. Was it the right decision? I don’t think there’s any way to know.
I hate this. Not knowing. Waiting and watching to see what will happen. That sort of attitude doesn’t get anyone anywhere.
But I’m heading off on a tangent here. Apologies. Back on track.
I’d submitted my notice at my previous job a bit earlier than what most people would expect, with the hopes that with the extra month or so I’d have ample time to spend on myself and my family and friends before I needed to pack my bags for grad school. I didn’t want to keep running, you know? Work my ass off at a thankless job, leave, work on my finances, my visa, fly off. What about me? Where does my personal time, without something constantly at the back of my mind come into play?
I think that’s what my attitude towards grad school, or rather prepping for grad school, was. Sounded exciting on paper, but as things started to solidify in front of me, my excitement simply ebbed away. Days passed before I got the courage to tell myself, “Hold on. Do I really want to do this? Or am I simply using it as an excuse to move and get a better life? Why am I even interested in this particular field? Have I even thought about what I could be doing otherwise?”
These thoughts were incessant, unwanted visitors in my head. They affected my work, they affected my health, they affected my relationships.
They haven’t stopped, a few months later.
The dystopian nightmare unfolding in India at the time certainly didn’t help. It was all one could do to simply stay sane without spending their energies on something as major as leaving for grad school. Good god. I have so much respect for the people who actually will be going this year. They’ve shown strength in the face of adversity while some might say I showed cowardice. Or simply a lack of will.
Either way, I decided to contact my college regarding a deferral just a few days before my last day at work.
Fast forward to roughly a month later, and I have no job. All I have right now is an uncertain year in front of me, and not just on the employabilty front.
You see, when you hear of someone in a similar situation as me, someone who is without a job during the worst crisis of our collective lifetime, you’d not be remiss in thinking that the person in question would be doing their utmost to bag a good offer as soon as humanly possible.
I thought that too.
And yet here I am, with absolutely no drive left me in me to do something other than consume media all day.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not like I’m just sitting on my ass. I have been looking around, talking to people, applying online like nobody’s business. I’ve even been rejected a few times already. If I’m honest with myself though, I could be doing more. So much more.
Before working full-time in my current field I used to devote as much of my day as I could to simply learning about it. Screencasts, side projects, blogs, tutorials, even normal discussions with people. I was hungry. I was driven, because I wanted to be good at something, for once, in my life. I didn’t want to be the above-average kid who could probably hold his own in surprise tests. I wanted to genuinely reach a level in which my skills would become intuition. All that comes with practice. Which I did. The next step would of course be getting some guidance, maybe via a professional background. This is after all why I applied to the job I just left.
Now, I do not know if this is the nature of my previous job, or the field itself, or simply a lack of focus on my part.
This opportunity I’d been looking for for so long, this opportunity I’d worked so hard for, turns out it isn’t all sunshine and roses.
Maybe it was naive of me to expect something more in line with what I’d been looking for, at the time. Or perhaps the red tape and workplace bureaucracy simply got to me.
Or perhaps, a tiny part of me whispers, maybe this doesn’t align with my strengths at all. This tiny part is speaking louder and louder as the clock ticks.
Anybody who knows me knows that I’m not a person of logic. I’m a person of stories, of dreams, of imagination. All of this is to a fault, to the extent that my own loved ones have asked me to get out of the bubble I live in. I don’t have it in me to ground myself, to force myself to reason and be logical while inspecting a problem in front of me. I think I’ve always known that I lack an analytical, rational mind. Problem-solving doesn’t give me the joy a lot of people in my field get. I’d much rather immerse myself in something entirely otherworldly.
This is most likely why I always have this fog in my mind whenever I try to do something even routinely challenging in my field, why my growth has been so excruciatingly slow, why, once I hit a wall, I’d rather turn around instead of attempting to scale it. I feel like what I do professionally (or was doing, anyway) is my mind going against the flow. That’s why there’s this inertia in me to grow.
I’m up against a tide I flung myself into.
Of course, I’m sure I’m not the only one. People of all sorts practically mold their minds into what’s needed to solve the task at hand, either through practice, extensive reading, bootcamps, whatever. People do it. It’s not impossible.
However, as soon as I think of trying to do something to better myself in this particular direction, I just deflate metaphorically.
And so I’ve been wondering what it is I truly do want from life. Consuming myself in my hobbies, while tempting, can be dismissed as asinine by many. Of course I can’t be serious. I’ve got the background and experience to do something “useful” with my life, why should I waste all that?
If I’m honest with myself, I never really wanted to be someone who changes the world. I’m not someone who’s striving to disrupt the market by launching a company, or by bettering humankind’s collective knowledge in a particular field. I don’t want to rise up the metaphorical ladder to earn enough to buy myself a plane.
I think I’ve always wanted to be content with my life, being comfortable enough to give ample time to family, friends and myself. I’d be happy once I get that.
Is that honestly so bad?
We’re bombarded constantly with people telling us to learn about this for future job prospects, or to pursue an education in this field, or to put my money here to grow my wealth, or to set up multiple streams of income, or to even read this book to get a “successful mindset.”
What hogwash.
Why do people even hustle? What are you hustling for? (God I hate this term so much)
Why is it, when someone says they don’t have “plans for the future” in mind, they’re looked at with this air that’s reminiscent of someone reprimanding a young child?
Why do people think it’s okay to work for four decades of your life before spending time on what you really want to do?
I’d like to infer that this is presumably why I’m not giving my all to this job search of mine. I know I need a job, but I’m not sure what job I want to do. I have a bit of time till next year now, before I need to start thinking about grad school again.
I’d like to be content in that time.
Side note: I just finished watching season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen (2020), and it is stellar, highly recommend!
