Adulting

I realize that it's been a while since I've posted anything here, because, in part, I've been lazy and writing takes energy, but mostly, I think, it's because I've had a pretty good summer, and I have found that I have less of a compulsion to write when I'm doing well and feeling good. For the most part, this summer was good, one of the best summers I've had in a long time in fact. Both [Totally a Cat] and [Keeper of All Knowledge] were in town for the majority of the summer, so I had people to do things with, and I had positions in two labs which gave me something to do during the day. Even if it was annoying to have to get up early, walk a mile to the bus stop, and then take the bus to campus every day, it was worth it, because more than anything, I need something productive to do with my time, or I get restless and depressed sitting at home doing nothing all day.

That's the trap I often find myself in during the summer, and I was glad to mostly avoid it this year. But that doesn't mean that I haven't had things on my mind, which now, with the semester fast approaching and more and more people leaving to go abroad, combined with some recent events that have brought some stuff I thought I had dealt with back up, are starting to trigger that old anxiety that eats away at me during those quiet, boring times. More so than anything, I've been thinking a lot about my life goals and such, what I actually want to do with my life, and who I want to be. I'm old enough to be considered an adult by pretty much every culture in the world, despite the fact that my government doesn't yet trust me to buy or consume alcohol for some reason. But I don't really feel like an adult. I've always thought that  I would have things figured out by the time I was 20, but I'm starting to realize that I may never really have things fully figured out.

I realized recently that I have no end goals. The innocuos enough question of what my dream job is left me stumped. I've never been much of a planner, dreaming of who I would be. I was never the kid who dreamed of her wedding or anything like that, because I can't really picture a future that is any different than the present, and the few times that I have allowed myself to picture things farther out than a couple of weeks, I've built up hopes that only came crashing down around me. I don't know if it's because I lack a sense of whimsey or creativity like people often tell me ("you're just too science minded to understand this art/feeling/existential thought") which I don't really believe (I am fully capable of understanding art and philosophy, I just think that a lot of it is dumb, and I get frustrated by people who deny reality in favor of fantasy; I have a hard time truly suspending disbelief) or if it's because I have learned to embrace the status quo as a defense mechanism (if things are fine the way they are, why risk getting hurt on only the off chance that things might get better?). I'm generally a fairly conservative person when it comes to my words and actions. It takes me a long time to get comfortable with people or situations, and even with my closest friends, I still often go over things in my head several times before saying them, particularly anything with any emotional weight, because I don't want to offend or be misunderstood, which is not to say that I'm articulate or at all a successful communicator. Why upset the status quo when things are going fine?

Regardless of the reason, I realized that I don't know where I want to be in ten years, or what I want to do with my life. I know I want to go to grad school and get a PhD and I know that I want to be interviewed on NPR, which is my person metric of success, but I don't know what I want to get a PhD in, or what I want to do with that degree, and as I was so kindly reminded, that is not an actual end goal. That is a stepping stone to something else eventually. It is a way of insulating myself in school, where I'm confortable, embracing the bubble, and avoiding the real world for five to seven more years. I mean, what other reasons do I have for wanting to go to grad school, when I really think about it? Outside of the fact that I can't let myself not pursue the highest degree available in my field, or that I need to prove to myself that I can do it, to banish the gnawing fear that I'm not actually as intelligent as I seem, but just am good at memorizing and parroting back random, somewhat useless trivia that sometimes overlaps with course requirements. But that's probably just my insecurities talking.

When I really think about it, despite a few brief forays into wanting to be a writer or an artist, I spent most of my childhood wanting to do something that related to science. When other kids were busy wanting to be giraffes when they grew up, I wanted to break the laws of physics, whatever that meant. On career day, I would go as an inventor or a superhero/villan when everybody else was busy dressing up as the president. I watched the PBS science show Nova for fun, and once forced my parents to take me home early from some event because I wanted to watch the special on the Human Genome Project. I duct taped a lawn chair to a skate board and used the handles of croquet mallets to propel myself around the neighborhood, because I was inventing things, dammit, never mind practicality!

I'm happy with my major, and I do want to go to grad school truly, but sometimes I wonder if I should have more of a plan for myself. If I can't picture myself in a situation that is at all different from my current one, will I ever be able to change where I'm at? Will I ever be able to see and take the opportunities that are in front of me? Or will I only be able to maintain the status quo, for better or for worse?