Thursday, September 15, 2011

Goals

Of course, it had to happen.
That moment in life where you sit back and actually think "What the fuck am I doing with my life?"
Sitting down, trying to find the motivation to start an assignment, I decided to think about my future prospectives and how it might be applicable to a job in the future that I'd love to be doing.
And it was then that it dawned on me... I didn't want to do anything like this in the future!

Maybe this moment of horror doesn't happen to everyone. But to be honest, this isn't the first time it's happened to me.
I've spent many a night on the phone to family and friends, complaining that I hate what I am doing, yet unsure of what it actually I want to do.
And I get told, "Robert, you're a smart young man. You can do anything you want!"
But that's the problem! What do I want?
There's also the subtle implication in that phrase, which is: "You're really smart, don't let it go to waste, do something super intellectual and impressive and high-pressure because you'll look like a massive failure if you don't live up to your perceived potential."
And I think that has been a major problem for me.
I don't want to be a doctor, I don't want to be a lawyer.
Sometimes I feel that I'm not smart enough. Other times I think I would be smart enough, but I have very little motivation to actually do anything like that.

Which made me feel lazy. Because I didn't feel any extreme passion towards kind of typical job.
Truth be told, the only passion I've every really had was for creative things, like music and writing. Things like this, things that I knew that I was good at and things that I really did enjoy.
Except no one ever encourages you do pursue any kind of career in that kind of area.
I've always felt as though the few things I've wanted to do are the few things that were never reinforced as something that I could do, never made out to be an achievable goal of any kind.

So now I'm stuck in an ultimate limbo world.
Studying a degree, doing two majors, one which I enjoy and one which I hate. I get to do a lot of writing, which I enjoy, but I don't often get the chance to be creative, which is quite suffocating. I'm still able to be creative and write music on the side, but often not as much as I'd like because I'm too pre-occupied about work I should be doing for my degree, and never feeling able to strike the right balance.

I have goals. I know they're probably achievable.
Let someone I managed to let everyone else's bullshit get in the way to the point that I don't know what's actually true anymore.

And I still have another essay that I should be writing.


"They called it education, I saw a means to an end
I saw my life another way" - It's Not A Bad Little War, Bayside