Often, it feels like I’m only getting older, without even a shoulder to cry on or someone to call mine, and everybody’s falling in love and I’m falling behind. It’s inescapable; couples holding hands as they walk across the street, sneaking kisses when they think no one is looking, and even in the digital world, where there are love letters dedicated as instagram highlights. Somehow, love feels that it’s all around me and yet constantly missing me by a millimeter. Like if I were to just move some inches to the left, or the right, somehow, cupid’s arrow, by the grace of Venus, would strike me.
Even beyond romance, with senior year coming to an end, *that* question is constantly finding a way to hit me where it hurts. Family, friends, professors, even strangers are asking “so, what’s next?” In a culture as prestigious as Bucknell’s, with people (rightfully) proudly announcing their acceptances into graduate school or cushy job offers, often, my bleak “I’m going back home,” feels like an invitation for a pity party I have no interest in hosting. And despite my life’s course of events going at a pace which is necessary for no one but myself, it’s hard to not look around and compare my shortcomings. I found myself slowly spiraling into a series of maddening questions querying where I went wrong in my undergraduate career to have not landed a job or been accepted into graduate school. Maybe I didn’t network enough, perhaps I’m not as good a writer as I thought, maybe I just spent 4 years wasting my time. It seemed that when I took a look around, everybody was falling into adulthood, and, well, me? I was falling behind.
After some weeks of wallowing and then maybe a bit more wallowing, I decided it was time to make the change I wanted to see. Given a much needed shove from my friends, professors and family, I started to think that perhaps these things weren’t working out for me right now.. because right now isn’t my time. Feeling burnt out from the past 4 years, would graduate school truly be a sustainable option for me? Sure, having a job would be nice, but would I want to have a role I’m not passionate about? And yes, being in love is a whimsical journey, but do I have the capacity to love someone else right now in the ways they need to be? Probably not. In reframing my thinking, I began to reaffirm that maybe my life has another direction I should be taking; a slower paced, creatively charged journey from hither to thither. So, here I am, writing this article, trying to find that direction.
In this period of self-reflection and trying to find guidance, a friend advised me to seriously think about where I want to be in the next six years, and what are things I can do to get there. Visualizing one’s goals, either through a vision board, or through journaling, has been helpful for me in the past to define my goals and therefore create a course of action to achieve them. If the world is my oyster, then I should grab the biggest spoon and dig in. And reader, wherever you are in your journey, whether it be on top of the world, or beneath your covers, know that only you are in control of your life and your thinking. You aren’t “behind,” but rather, where you need to be right now. And maybe “right now” is the beginning of the story. It just takes a leap of faith to get to the rest.