So, What’s Next?
This is going to be yet another reflective article because all I do is reflect these days. My life has felt pretty stable recently. On a day to day basis I feel pretty content with my relationships and work. I feel like I have a decent handle on my emotional and physical health. I do still struggle with waves of grief, but for the most part, I am used to them. Looking at everything holistically, I genuinely have nothing to complain about, which is fantastic. It is interesting because the past few years I have spent in survival mode, so it has been an adjustment to come back to my “normal/regular” life. It is also incredibly rewarding to feel some degree of stability and happiness because I have put a lot of effort into working on myself over these past few years.
For a lot of my friends who are currently working, we have reached this point in our lives that a lot of us dreamed of while we were in college. At least for me, I thought I’d be working, living on my own and having some fun. Now that I’ve reached this point, it is easy for me to wonder if this is it? Is this what the rest of adult life is? I always thought there would be a little bit more. This makes me want to do something new and different. It makes me want to ask, what’s next?
I’m starting to wonder now if that question, “what’s next?” is actually worth asking and exploring. Part of me feels like there is this pressure in our society, especially American society to constantly be growing and changing and evolving. We always need to be doing SOMETHING. This pressure is sometimes really stressful and unnecessary. What’s wrong with sitting in this feeling of stability and happiness for a little bit longer? I’ve also been ingrained to interpret this feeling of stability as being bored, and being bored is not necessarily a positive feeling in our society.
After college, a lot of the decisions and changes we make are based on our own internal clocks. We have to learn how to listen to how we are feeling a lot more than we ever had to. It is such a large adjustment from spending 21ish years being on someone else’s timeline. These are some of the questions I’ve been asking myself. They don’t necessarily have straightforward answers and there is no equation for figuring out if I need to make a change in my life.
- Am I learning anything new right now?
- Do I want to be learning something new right now?
- Is there a certain part of my life that needs a little bit more attention?
- What parts of my life am I feeling “bored” about?
- How much time am I spending on my phone and consuming content?
- How often am I thinking about all of these things?
After having all this time to reflect, I’ve realized that I am ready for a little bit of change. For the first time in my life, my grief and relationships are not the thing that are the most on my mind. I want to spend more time and effort on my career and what it looks like. I am actually excited to think about these things which is interesting because the last time I was this excited was my senior year of college. I don’t know how else to explain it, but I can feel it in my physical body. There really is no timeline for any of these things. We do things when we feel like they are right for us and that’s how it should be!
I do reserve the right to change my opinion about all of these things in the future and that is totally OK. This is how I’m feeling right now and it has been fun to analyze. As always, thanks for following along, and I hope that if you are feeling similarly, you can get something out of this article!
