so much has happened but nothing has changed

It's fairly demoralizing when you realize that the passion you thought you held for a career path is no longer there. As young 20-somethings, we're prone to change our mind about what is we want to do with our lives, let alone even figure it out in the first place.

My life has been on a single track since September of 2005, when I first stepped into a room which would the host of a class in a subject I would eventually hope to see a future in. Everything I’ve studied, everything I’ve trained myself for, every class, every internship, every job search led me down this one single plan. I stuck to this plan so vehemently that even when I began to question whether or not I was still into the whole shebang, I continually convinced myself that there was a future in this path I had laid out in front of me.

And I’d have to say I did a pretty admirable job of trudging along this tunnel with the greatest hope that everything would make perfect sense once I reached that light at the end. Even as my interest began to fade, the day to day at my job started feeling longer and I found myself questioning my grand scheme of a career path I had prepared myself for, I somehow faked a smile and told myself "don’t worry Mark, keep at this, you’re putting in your time and you’ve come this far and this is it…you’ll see."

But is this it?

I know, this isn’t the first time I’ve asked myself that. And it won’t be the last given that I find myself 11 months later feeling as if so much has happened but nothing has changed.

For the first time in a long time, I’ve been feeling unhappy about where I stand at this point in my life. Perhaps it was the fact that I’ve spent a whole year working the same dead-end job, maybe it’s because of the sudden massive exodus of many of those closest to me to bigger and better things in life. But as I reflect, I can’t help but wonder that I haven’t done enough to improve myself. Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of the bigger picture and only now do I find myself feeling a sense of such soulless mediocrity (melodramatic I may seem, but you try and paste bus schedules onto a website day in and day out for the past 12 months).

you can only do it for so long.

The part I don’t understand about myself is that I already knew that I was on a safe and reliable path towards independence and stability, taking this realistic and conservative road in life. I already knew that the work I was doing was unsatisfying and unstimulating, but I somehow persuaded myself into thinking that “I can’t complain…I have a job.”

A job. That’s all it is at this point.

Somehow I persuaded myself that this was the end-all be-all in life. That this was the sole path for me. Somehow I scared myself into thinking that things would fall apart if I were to lose this job or try to shake things up by trying to do something else with my life.

When did I become so tame? Why am I so fearful of the breakup of the rote routine that has come to define my everyday life? In the past, I didn’t fear the lack of a paycheck every two weeks at the expense of my weekday hours from 9-5. I didn’t let a dull job behind a desk define who I was as a person. I don’t feel like I’m living life anymore. I’m merely living.

In the past year, I’ve let myself slip into some sort of mindless job-related coma. Somewhere along the way, I stopped striving for something. I wouldn’t say that I was content, but I sure as hell wasn’t doing anything about it. It pains me most to look back at myself in the past year and realize that I haven’t worked on myself at all...I just worked. Who at 22 and 23 would be proud of that?

I need to shake things up. And I need to re-teach myself the fearlessness and the drive to move onto more meaningful things in life. "Someone’s gotta do it" just isn’t going to cut it for me anymore. The relatively happy paychecks and growing retirement fund no longer seem worth it when I feel like I’m merely wasting my time. I want to do what I want to do. I want to work on myself. I want to put in the effort so I can say that at the end of it all and however long it took that at least I’m doing something I’m passionate about.

A friend of mine put it best:

"Then, dive into the deep end of the pool.

Reach as far as you can. And touch the bottom.

When you come up for air, you'll be exactly where you ought to be."

Not gonna lie, I’m frightened as hell to take the next step. But that’s a good thing.

"fun fact: as an incoming frosh, the deciding factor btwn 2 colleges was toilet paper. on that note, stanford would've won me with its 2-ply....given i'd applied and gotten accepted"

-JRT