always questioning...

It’s a daily fight to make myself take steps towards the thing I presume everyone sees me doing. I put on my business casual clothes, don my lanyard with my smiling face on the ID card, lift my chin, and go out determined to feel more brave and competent today than I did yesterday. I am passionate and hard working. I don’t like being told (by others or by myself) that I can’t do something. I tackle challenges and obstacles like I am constantly trying to prove something. I want to serve others and be an agent of change in this world that so desperately needs the kind of person that I aim to be. But it is taxing and tiresome, and I am always questioning my motives.

 The reality of things is that serving others as I have chosen to on my career path is not as natural to me as I pretend it is. What is natural to me is solitude, art, nature, sewing, writing, and slowing down. The speed at which my life has been going feeds my neurosis. Do this, then this, now that, and then onto the other thing, and don’t forget to do this too, and now the day is over so you’ll have to hurry up and sleep because there are other things you have to hurry up and wake up for. I must either follow suite or fail, so I keep going and ignore the inner voice that says, “slow down.”

 I don’t know how to balance these two sides of me… the side that aims to selflessly serve others and the side that yearns for me to stop and be nurtured by my own self-love that seems to be so lacking. Sometimes I overthink it all and feel compelled to make a brash decision, like “Just stop pursuing this path that is consuming all of your energy and simply become that reclusive children’s book author you always dreamed you’d be!” My response is always to discount that vision as naïve and unrealistic. I tell myself that it would be too difficult to make that work. But I ignore the difficulties of the path that I am currently on. I do not feel like I am truly honoring myself. Maybe it is because I’m still in student mode, without the extensive training, experience, and autonomy to do my work as I envision myself doing. But what if the reality of this field is that it may never be what I envisioned? What if the reality is that my chosen role will never help youth the way I feel driven to? What if the only way is for me to run from the politics, paperwork, and jaded realities of this industry? How do I know whether or not to leap, and when, and what to leap towards?