Is anyone else feeling like they're just losing track of time and not going anywhere? Because I do.
I'm currently on the look out for a change career-wise, looking around at what I could do next. I got an okay degree, and I've been in a good job for 3 years, and I'm at that stage where I need to get moving on what I really want out of life, but streamlining what that should be feels like a massive weight. I am so jealous of all those people who knew from a young age they wanted to be a doctor, or professional sportsperson, or to work with their parents. I literally went to uni, had a ball, then looked around for jobs for months in my third year, and ended up where I am now, and I'm like - surely this isn't it for me.
I recently read a book that's sent my head spinning, and kicked me up the bum. Now, usually I'm not one for hippy-dippy self-help reads, I am definitely the type of person that wastes hours reading b*llsh*t articles on Buzzfeed like "what Bridgerton character are you" over getting cosy with a book like you see people do on Instagram. But with this book, for the first time, I felt like someone was finally speaking to me, the 23 year old woman, a "someone" who is capable of having a life and doing "something".
In the book, it you need to timeline your life with your goals, so that when you fast forward a few years, you've laid the foundations now in your twenties for what you want to do in the future. This gave me food for thought, and undeniably scared me sh*tless.
I'm in a job I love, but I'm living at my job, living for work, and not getting that classic movie life where the twenties are about going out meeting new people living crazily, and I know that it's not something I want to do forever. I have a boyfriend who loves and supports me, we work together now and it works well, but we also are coming to a crossroads where we want to pursue other career paths - what's going to happen to us, and what if I f*ck it up. There's a bloody pandemic going on - where the hell am I going to go? Where will I live? How will I support myself? What if I move somewhere else and I make no friends, no money and I feel worse then than I do now?
This kind of anxiety-led rampage is constantly in my head, and it's getting worse as time goes on.
Social media is the devil when it comes to this too. I scroll through my feed and I'm inundated with posts from my peers about their lives and successes. Photos of keys "move in day with my love"; sonogram photos and videos of people popping balloons "IT'S A GIRL!!!OMG"; small business owners trying to tempt us all into buying their candles; photos of ring fingers. And yes, these are a handful of my Facebook friends, and I know there's people out there like me that feel lost and a little sheepish. Do these people have timelines? Do they feel scared as I do?
This GIF is me, 99% of the time. The other 1%, I am sleeping.
The book goes on to talk about fertility, relationships, the mind, careers. There were some real home truths in there; the type of advise you wouldn't get from someone who didn't work with twentysomethings and know the deep-rooted panic that lives in many of us at the prospect of the future.
Time is ticking, and the pressure of that only feels high because I'm incapable of making a tough decision.
Bleurgh, life dilemma.
If you want to feel like me - stressed, weirdly motivated and confused, you should look into this book, linked below.
