There’s something really cathartic about writing down thoughts and feelings for people on the internet to somewhat relate to. The process goes like this: conceive an idea, tap black keys with white letters to make black letters appear on white pages, backspace, shape thoughts into sentences and sentences into paragraphs that sit quiet but content, as I sit quiet and content and try to gather my feelings after finishing a post.

In writing, I know what I am doing.

In life – well.

Most of these posts on a Sunday are shower thoughts, or 2 to 3am musings when I should be sleeping. Sometimes they’ll hit me in the moment (like now) or I’ll plan out a topic, write, schedule and not think about it again until it’s published automatically by algorithms that know what they are doing. Sometimes they have a purpose – like reminding people that creativity is of great importance in the curriculum, or advice on how to get out of a procrastination loop – sometimes not so much, and I feel like this is going to be in the ‘not so much’, but here we are.

I have no idea what I am doing.

When it’s typed, staring back at me, it looks like a silly thing to say – or write – because right now, I am very aware that I am typing, that I’m living and breathing and thinking and occasionally sipping peppermint green tea. I’m at university, I’m studying, I’m socialising, I’m learning and expanding my horizons daily. I’m reading an insane amount of literature. I’m existing in a crazy world where I feel I have none of the control, but all of the control, and I am very good at looking like I sort of have my life together.

I have no idea what I am doing, but if I look at where I was this time last year, or the year before that compared to now, I see a line graph with time along the x-axis and happiness along the y and the readings suggest that as we move away from the point of this graph’s origin, although I have no idea what I’m doing, I am doing something right in terms of my mental health. I am, at least, moving in a forwards direction.

Perhaps this feeling of treading water at sea in a changeable climate stems from the fact I have no long term plan to transition into once this 4-year term has ended. The end of something has always, always been followed up by a certainty of something else: primary into secondary school, gcse’s into a-levels, a-levels into a gap year into work into uni into Korea into uni into dissertation. There has always been an inescapable certainty of ‘the next’, a pattern to prepare for and fall into and get marginally ahead with… and I don’t have that right now. I have a big sign of unknown in blinking neon, humming away on the current of my unconfirmed future as it lights up my peripheral vision whenever I chance a look at it. Hurtling along as the months count down in an ominously speedy fashion, 10 into 8 into 6 into 5, now 4, the only constant in an unpredictable equation is the passing of time and how many hours I need to be writing a day.

I have no idea what I’m doing but my reality is writing and reading and putting off the more important things and telling people that ‘yeah sure I’m looking into it’ when really I’m lost for career direction. I have no idea, really, what I could be doing, five, ten years from now. Which country will I be in, what will my job security be like? I know what I like doing, and someday hope to have people listen to the words that I am writing, or speaking despite my tiny voice. I have an idea but I don’t know how to go about getting there.

It’s thoughts like these that I’ve spent more and more time mulling over, to the point where I’ve decided that I need to be more present than speculative. So sod the future, for now. I have no idea what I’m doing but at this very moment that’s ok. It’ll work out in the wash and I should spend more time enjoying what is happening right this second.

I might have no idea what I’m doing but I’m content with that. I’m happy.

♥

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