the world isn’t ending, you’re just 23

I miss the feeling of waking up and being excited to do absolutely nothing with my day. I wonder if that feeling ever really comes back once you become an adult.

I feel suffocated by the weight of trying to figure out how I want to spend my life. It seems so greedy to want more than one path, but how could I possibly choose just one way to be? Who decided that was the expectation? I want to be a filmmaker, a writer, a baker, a wife, a friend, happy. I want so many things and feel paralysed by the fear of obtaining none of them.

So much has changed in life in the year since finishing college — I don’t know why I thought it would all be easier. I’ve loved and lost and survived. People that I was certain would be in my life forever now seem like a distant memory. It’s a strange thing to lose a friendship in your 20s. I still think of them when it’s their birthday, or hear their favourite song, but would absolutely avoid all contact if I saw them on the street.

More recently, when I think about my life, my career is no longer at the centre of it. I think for the first time I’m actually beginning to understand what matters to me. I want to feel security in my surroundings and be surrounded by people who uplift me. I want to shower people in all of the brimming love I have to give. I want to enjoy my small hobbies without thinking of how I need to monetise them. I want to take my medicine in the morning and not think about it for the rest of the day. I want a quiet life — but a job wouldn’t go astray too.

I don’t know what I am doing with my life and I’m not sure I’m going to find that answer anytime soon so for now, what I am trying to do is watch a TV show without feeling guilty, taking a nap if my body needs it, trying out new jobs without the fear of sticking to the mould of what I told people I want to be when I was 16, spending time with my friends, writing these silly little blogs, baking, reading, and listening to myself. Guilt is such a wasted emotion in all the wrong places.

I hope I begin to embrace the excitement in the unknown rather than the fear. The world is scary and life seems so long and I forget that most of the time. And truthfully, no one is really that interested in what we’re doing which is a pretty reassuring thought, actually.