Dear Diary,
Dear Future Me,
Hmm…Where do I even start? I’ve never written a diary entry before, so I suppose I can begin by saying — I hope you’re doing okay. I guess I came here to reflect on where I’m at right now in life. Jotting it down seems to help people, so I thought why not give that a try? Don’t get me wrong though, this isn’t going to be one of those sweet diary entries. But the point is I want you to look back at this and learn something and hopefully be in a better place than I am right now. Anyways, setting the scene: it’s the year 2022 now and we’re still in the midst of a pandemic (How’s that going now by the way? Are fewer people dying or getting sick?) and I constantly feel like I’ve lost so much time and haven’t been taking advantage of so many opportunities in college, since I’ve been online for the majority of the time. You know when you feel like everyone has their shit together but you? Well, that’s me right now.
I’m a junior in college who really has no idea what I’m doing *nervous laughter.* Not knowing what the future holds for me literally keeps me up at night. I have so many questions: What do I want to do with my life? What am I going to do once this chapter of my life closes? What am I passionate about? I’m honestly getting really anxious thinking about this right now, which, by the way, is something I pray you’re doing better at. Sometimes it’s really hard for me to get up in the morning and find the motivation to actually care about school when I don’t know what my next step is or don’t find joy in what I used to. Nonetheless, there’s that little voice of hope in my head saying “everything’s going to work out.”
Everyone keeps saying “Fizza, don’t stress out,” and it’s okay to not know what you want to do right now. But, have you met me?! Of course I’m going to stress out about this! I understand that college is a place for growth and to learn about your different passions through different opportunities, and I want so badly to believe everything will fall into place and it’s all going to be okay, but what do I do right now? Man, we really need to work on managing stress, huh?
The only thing somewhat comforting to me right now is the fact that, despite society’s pressure on young people to choose a path and to stick with it, most people usually go into careers different from what they’re majoring in, so MAYBE I have some time to think about different career options? So, future me: Have you figured out what you’re passionate about yet? If not, get it together it’s okay. Keep looking, it’s there waiting for you. I don’t know if there’s really a lesson in this chaos I’ve written, but I guess if you could take anything away from it, it is maybe that you don’t have to have it figured out all the time and it’s okay to have questions (even if they keep you up at night, unfortunately). Even if life hasn’t worked out exactly the way you thought it would, I hope you at least don’t feel as lost as I do right now. More so, I hope you didn’t let the fear of the unknown stop you from becoming something great. Lastly, I hope you learned how to start taking a deep breath every now and then and stop letting life pass you by, and that you’ve learned to appreciate the people around you more.
(P.S. have we stopped overthinking yet?)
Sincerely,
You