On being lost (and other miscellaneous thoughts)

Photo by Sebastien Gabriel

I feel like barfing all the time.
I'm super stressed and I  honestly don't know what to do with my life. Graduation is coming up, and I know that it's fine to not have a job lined right up afterward, but somehow that feels like a failure to me. And I know I should reframe my thinking about that, especially after talking with so many friends and family members who were in the same boat as me, and didn't have a job right after college. They all told me that it's fine to wait and figure out what to do; but, then I keep on hearing other stories that sometimes you just never know what to do, even when you're 40-years-old and doing what you think you love.

That sense of being lost has been stuck with me forever. And I don't know what to do with it, and I don't think I ever will. People talk about finding their purpose in life like it's a casual easy thing to do. It isn't. It honestly isn't.

To be honest, I went into my English major because it was just something to do. I enjoyed reading and writing and thinking about things in a new way. And I knew for sure that I would never be happy if I did engineering or something in the medical field. And then as I went further into English, I realized that I also liked learning more about the behind-the-scenes stuff of how a story gets published. That made me realize, hey I want to go into the publishing field. However, I don't know where I want to start in, despite some of the obvious choices that are right in front of me.

There are also so many doubts, and a quiet realization of fuck I'm fucking scared.

I know I could have been the "good" Asian American who follows her parent's dreams and wishes. One who could have been a good doctor (minus the constant fear and wanting to barf if I mess up some how some way.) I could have continued staying quiet and not gotten a tattoo and not learn more about social justice and what it means to be Asian American and in general human and all the consequences (both good and bad) that come with it. But then I wouldn't be the same me sitting at her laptop writing all of this down. I would have been someone completely different, probably someone more sad and robotic and well boring.

And that is not someone I want to become.

And now the weather:
Don't Disappoint Me by Ruth B.

~ Stacy N.