Sometimes it takes being where you want to be to know where you should be
I'll be honest, it's been a hard 2 years for me. But I've been able to cope and advance despite all that. It's the professional thing to do, the most constructive. It's helped me become a completely different person; different from that girl who was so timid and has enough friends that her fingers could count; different from the girl who was so unconfident.
I became a person that my past self would be very proud of. She'd be ecstatic to know who I've become. That's the beauty of it. And yet... my present self is, for lack of a better term, suffering.
There comes a point in a person's life where they question the choices they made for the dreams that they thought was THE dream. A friend of mine called it a Zuko Redemption Arc. And yes, that's an Avatar reference. (Watch the show. It's fucking amazing.)
The dream that I've come to accomplish was four to five years in the making. It's a tough dream. It's something I fought for, something I wanted to do all my life (and I was, like 16 at the time when I said this), and something that is indeed the most difficult thing I've done yet.
But as great of a feeling it is to be able to know that I somehow, sort of, in a way, made it, there was this lingering negative emotion through it all. It wasn't from all the years of hard work or gunning of my ideas. It was a deep pit that felt like it was sucking my person.
Now normally, there's a trigger to all this, right? And it took me a while to figure out what it was.
March 25, 2019. I was early in the office, as usual. At 10am, my co-worker came in, freshened up, and told me this:
"You're always so early and almost always the last to go home."
My usual reply to those statements is "Oh, I want to beat the traffic. So I head out early before the rush and late after the rush." It ended there... for my co-worker.
A normal conversation... until the anxiety kicked in.
My reply caused a bunch of thoughts to crash down into me in one heavy splash. It was unlike anything that I ever experienced. It was like the water of a huge basin was being spilled all over my head. I felt suffocated, I felt the need to curl into a ball, I was tearing up. I asked my boss if I could take the rest of the day off and she let me, bless her.
And here I thought I was so strong what with spending three years in the industry.
When I was told that I wasn't thinking fast enough, I made sure I'd think faster. When I was told I didn't belong, I just kept going and wrote.
But when it came down to what that co-worker said to me, I cracked, very badly. It was after a night's sleep that I came to realize that I was, perhaps, grasping a dream made of sand.
Oh my god. What is this chick trying to say? Sand? Like wtf?
Here's the thing, when you hold a ball of wet sand, it stays that way for a while. It maintains its shape for as long as it can. But when it dries it, it slowly seeps through your fingers and becomes smaller and smaller. You do your best to make it a ball again. You put on the sand that was falling off of it, but you're actually making it less like the ball you once had because it mixed in with other sand.
And when you just let it all fall, you end up with a pile of dry sand in your hand. You do your best to make it a sturdy ball again, but when you do that, you're left with a smaller ball that will dry up faster than the first.
I'm turning 25 this year, and I feel like it's such a pivotal age. I feel pressured thinking that I need to get my shit together and that I need to know the next step before I explode.
When I look at the metaphorical sand ball in my hand, I notice how intensely I'm keeping it from disintegrating. I'm holding it tight thinking that that's the best way to maintain it, to keep it.
But no. In fact, that's probably the worst way; because if I keep it up then the ball will less likely fall through my fingers, and more likely crumble from how hard I want it to stay in shape. And I won't even have a small pile of sand left in my palm.
It dawned on me that I've been keeping this dream from disintegrating when in reality it's been running me dry. But the thing is, I was prepared for this. I was prepared to keep at it and write and write and write for an industry that held so much promise for the future, my future.
Or so I thought.
This brings me to the point of the title. (Finally. Hahaha).
"Sometimes it takes being where you want to be to know where you should be."
I can already tell that I'm being pushed away from where I want to be right now. The problem is, I don't know which direction I'm supposed to take to get to where I should be.
It's not a bad thing, it's not an urgent thing, but it's important for me. It's important that I know what to do, what direction to take, and what steps to take so I don't feel so lost, so weak, so anxious, and so pitted that I lose myself in the process.
Don't worry. It's something that I should be able to handle. I mean, I've been doing it for so long, so I guess it should be a piece of cake.
Now, it's a matter of approaching this productively and constructively. I don't want to walk away from my past self's dream without assuring that my future self has something waiting for her. It would be mean to let her do all the work.
For now, though, the present me will do her best. As she's supposed to. As she's always been able to do. It's going to be much harder now that she's admitted this to herself. But then again, it's no different from the girl who fought for her dream. It's just that she'll be fighting much harder now to find the real dream.
Thanks for reading~
I became a person that my past self would be very proud of. She'd be ecstatic to know who I've become. That's the beauty of it. And yet... my present self is, for lack of a better term, suffering.
There comes a point in a person's life where they question the choices they made for the dreams that they thought was THE dream. A friend of mine called it a Zuko Redemption Arc. And yes, that's an Avatar reference. (Watch the show. It's fucking amazing.)
The dream that I've come to accomplish was four to five years in the making. It's a tough dream. It's something I fought for, something I wanted to do all my life (and I was, like 16 at the time when I said this), and something that is indeed the most difficult thing I've done yet.
But as great of a feeling it is to be able to know that I somehow, sort of, in a way, made it, there was this lingering negative emotion through it all. It wasn't from all the years of hard work or gunning of my ideas. It was a deep pit that felt like it was sucking my person.
Now normally, there's a trigger to all this, right? And it took me a while to figure out what it was.
March 25, 2019. I was early in the office, as usual. At 10am, my co-worker came in, freshened up, and told me this:
"You're always so early and almost always the last to go home."
My usual reply to those statements is "Oh, I want to beat the traffic. So I head out early before the rush and late after the rush." It ended there... for my co-worker.
A normal conversation... until the anxiety kicked in.
My reply caused a bunch of thoughts to crash down into me in one heavy splash. It was unlike anything that I ever experienced. It was like the water of a huge basin was being spilled all over my head. I felt suffocated, I felt the need to curl into a ball, I was tearing up. I asked my boss if I could take the rest of the day off and she let me, bless her.
And here I thought I was so strong what with spending three years in the industry.
When I was told that I wasn't thinking fast enough, I made sure I'd think faster. When I was told I didn't belong, I just kept going and wrote.
But when it came down to what that co-worker said to me, I cracked, very badly. It was after a night's sleep that I came to realize that I was, perhaps, grasping a dream made of sand.
Oh my god. What is this chick trying to say? Sand? Like wtf?
Here's the thing, when you hold a ball of wet sand, it stays that way for a while. It maintains its shape for as long as it can. But when it dries it, it slowly seeps through your fingers and becomes smaller and smaller. You do your best to make it a ball again. You put on the sand that was falling off of it, but you're actually making it less like the ball you once had because it mixed in with other sand.
And when you just let it all fall, you end up with a pile of dry sand in your hand. You do your best to make it a sturdy ball again, but when you do that, you're left with a smaller ball that will dry up faster than the first.
I'm turning 25 this year, and I feel like it's such a pivotal age. I feel pressured thinking that I need to get my shit together and that I need to know the next step before I explode.
When I look at the metaphorical sand ball in my hand, I notice how intensely I'm keeping it from disintegrating. I'm holding it tight thinking that that's the best way to maintain it, to keep it.
But no. In fact, that's probably the worst way; because if I keep it up then the ball will less likely fall through my fingers, and more likely crumble from how hard I want it to stay in shape. And I won't even have a small pile of sand left in my palm.
It dawned on me that I've been keeping this dream from disintegrating when in reality it's been running me dry. But the thing is, I was prepared for this. I was prepared to keep at it and write and write and write for an industry that held so much promise for the future, my future.
Or so I thought.
This brings me to the point of the title. (Finally. Hahaha).
"Sometimes it takes being where you want to be to know where you should be."
I can already tell that I'm being pushed away from where I want to be right now. The problem is, I don't know which direction I'm supposed to take to get to where I should be.
It's not a bad thing, it's not an urgent thing, but it's important for me. It's important that I know what to do, what direction to take, and what steps to take so I don't feel so lost, so weak, so anxious, and so pitted that I lose myself in the process.
Don't worry. It's something that I should be able to handle. I mean, I've been doing it for so long, so I guess it should be a piece of cake.
Now, it's a matter of approaching this productively and constructively. I don't want to walk away from my past self's dream without assuring that my future self has something waiting for her. It would be mean to let her do all the work.
For now, though, the present me will do her best. As she's supposed to. As she's always been able to do. It's going to be much harder now that she's admitted this to herself. But then again, it's no different from the girl who fought for her dream. It's just that she'll be fighting much harder now to find the real dream.
Thanks for reading~
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