future thoughts
i was cleaning through my miscellaneous notebooks i had lying around in my room. i go back to work on monday, so i've been trying to clean up a little before i go back to work after chilling about for the past month and...
i found a list about career stuff in one of my notebooks.
i think it's probably from around 2020, around the time i was on my last amount of classes of community college. i was set to graduate the year after.
i don't remember any of this, but i wrote down a detailed list, with pros and cons, figuring out what type of career i wanted to go into after graduation. most of them featured around being a digital or content creator, and then going into detail the possible work that i'd need to do in order to accomplish this. though, i would have gotten severely creatively burnt out the year after, which would have hindered me from any type of creation for some time.
i think the stress would have eaten me alive had i decided to continue being a freelancer. it would have made been so difficult for me to do anything if it sucked my soul out to do. even when i had a part time job as a library assistant, i was still stressing on what was going to be supplementary income in addition to my part time. it overtook my thoughts in every way, shape or form. i feel like i tried everything in order to make it work. animation, comics, freelance, networking, streaming, youtube videos, etc etc etc
sometimes i wonder what would have happened if i decided to go back. i don't think i would considering how bad it was for my health, but every now and then the whispers of ideas come to the back of my mind. "you like streaming, why don't we try being a streamer again" "we could do freelance if you temper your expectations" "we could work with a publisher", and so on.
ultimately, i don't know what the future holds. even though i'm going back to school to finish my bachelors and get a masters degree, i don't even know if i'm going to get that far! finish the bachelors, sure, but that would be 1 1/2 to 2 years from now. who knows what i'll be doing in that time span! i finished 106 pages of a webcomic in a year. i self published a short run of a graphic novel and did another smaller run within a few months in that same year! i hosted and published a 17 person digital anthology within a year! i didn't even think i would work at a library again or would be there for 4 years! nor did i think that after 6 years and 3 colleges that i'd be going back to school 5 years later either LOL (i used to hate school!). so, i have no idea what the future holds. but, if there's anything i'm better at now at 27 than i was at 20, it's that i know better than to make all of these plans and get upset when life pulls you off script.
i am trying to get better about going with the flow and over planning. unfortunately, uncertainty and the fear of the unknown is my biggest enemy and oldest op,. but... i didn't know where i was going to be 6 years ago, and i'm still okay. i got so scared about where i was going to be now. i have to keep reminding myself that as long as there's a roof over my head and food on the table... 🤷 i'll figure it out. unfortunately, i think this fear was instilled in me by my parents 😭 and an unfortunate fear to give to your kid, the fear of the future.
it's so hard, but with gritted teeth i will continue to fight to remind myself that things will work out and to not worry about the future so much. it's unknown, but the net won't fall out from under you in two seconds. and hell, even if it does? you have family, you have friends. you're not just gonna explode (or whatever my brain is afraid that'll happen LOL)