Nicole Duran, Period 1, 9/30/21

I’ve never been much of a goal-oriented person. Shocking, for someone who goes to a school in which you could probably pull almost anyone to the side and get a fairly straightforward idea of what the next four years of their lives are meant to be like. Even if it’s not an exact plan they more or less have an idea. That’s not to say I don’t have a plan either, albeit a much more loose one. 

The way I think back on it, I’m not very goal-oriented because the idea of constantly having goals stresses me out. I don’t think it’d take more than about a few minutes with me to understand that I’m deeply uncomfortable in most situations. I’ve definitely gotten better with it, but looking back I think if I were to be in a one-on-one conversation with someone in ninth grade I’d last for about a minute before spontaneously combusting. The point is I’m anxious. The more thought I put into things like that the worse I do. I’m much more of a “go with the flow” type of person.

The plan, for now, is as follows: Finish high school, get accepted into the College of Staten Island (preferably by scholarship but if not, no big deal), get a bachelor's in psychology. If I find something I like a lot more than psychology, then I’ll look into that, maybe a dual major if the school I go to allows it. If not, I continue my master's at a separate and more credible school. 

That’s about it.

It’s not that bad of a plan. There’s definitely worse. I could decide to take a gap year from college, end up never getting a degree at all and live in my mom’s basement for the rest of my days playing Minecraft 2 or something. Then again, streaming has gone on the rise so even that wouldn’t be too awful. 

I feel weird talking to people about it though. “What career do you want” has become less of a one-worded answer and more of a multi-step plan that still skips around the question to the point where you don’t even really notice it. The rational part of me understands that this is completely fine. Very few high schoolers really know what they want to do by the time they leave high school, why would I be any different. Well you see, it all goes back to anxiety.

Anxiety! There we go! Always in our corner, telling us how we’re meant to eventually fail and that you can only scrape by so many times before you eventually can’t grab hold and fall into the desolate pit of no return. Cheerful, I know. It’s not as dramatic as that most of the time. Most of the time it feels more like a bored and accusatory college and career counselor tiredly interrogating me.

What job do you want?

Where will you live?

How will you pay for it?

What job will you get that will pay enough for the house you want to have?

When will you have the house?

If you want to have a house by the time you’re 30 what job will you need to have and furthermore what will your yearly salary have to be?

How will you survive in a world in which the housing market is a mess and prices rise faster than wages? How will you pay for utilities, food, clothes? To move on from that, how will you make enough money that you’ll be able to do what you want, while also having enough time to dedicate to doing it?

Will you have a job you love or will you wilt away behind a desk making a meager 40K a year, working 9-5 every weekday, and spending the weekends doing chores?

It’s a lot. 

It’s not exactly easy trying to be goal-oriented when whenever you think about the future you’re assaulted with that kind of an inner monologue.

The point of this isn’t to sound pessimistic though. It’s not meant to discourage anyone or make the world seem unbearable and terrifying. I think if anything I want it to do the opposite. If I can be an anxiety-ridden mess and still kind of know what I want to do with my life, then honestly you can’t be doing much worse! 

A joke of course. The point still stands though that I still try to work towards things, albeit nothing exactly major. Whenever I have something I’m interested in, and I mean REALLY interested in, I try to look up ways it can be applied in the real world. From broader topics like animating and comics to slightly more niche things like world-building and tabletop RPG games. I want to do something. Whether that be with my life or just in general. I’m not one to just sit twiddling my thumbs for hours on end. At some point, I need to get up and go somewhere, make something, read, watch, sing, anything and everything. Not to mention I want to be a lot more social, and I’ve been trying my hand at that with various levels of success. I guess these all kind of stack up as smaller goals, like little side quests. I don’t need to do them, but it’d be fun! Might get something out of it.

So I think it’s okay that I don’t have any giant goals or grand plans. I don’t think I need to. I mean I’m in high school and the stuff that I plan to do here can only go so far before being stopped by whatever happens after I graduate. For now, I’m going to enjoy what I have, and that’s good enough for me.