Journal Time!

Change and a chance to Grow, maybe? | April 23, 2023

Hi there. It's been a while since I've added to you. You're sort of not really a compendium of my thoughts. I try to tell other people but this is another way I suppose. Maybe I should read it seeing as I expect I'm the only audience. But anyways.

Things are changing, really quickly. Everything is changing. I'm about to ship away to the other side of a very large state and try to survive in a totally new environment with all new people and challenges. I'll have to do all that while keeping myself from imploding in on myself as I swim in a slew of anxieties and worries and fears. Ohhhh goodness.

I know it'll be scary. It'll be so goddamn scary. It is so damn scary. But I think I'm going to be okay. Everyone else there is feeling the exact same way, save a lucky few with enough self-confidence to think they'll make it no problem. Everybody there is some flavor of weird and kooky and undesirable, because they are real people. I just have to remind myself sometimes that they are real people and not deities sent to mock me for not having everything figured out.

I'm wandering right now. I don't really have a set framework for what I should be doing with my life. I have vague ideas about being a data scientist, but I don't really know what that entails nor if I'll be any good nor if it will even work out. There's so much you have to know that I just don't. I'm scared of failing.

But failure is sure to come. I'm going to suck at the beginning. Most things worth doing are hard; learning how to be an adult is part of that. Right now, I don't really know how to do job stuff or how to establish and maintain friendships or how to live with myself. I don't know how to do so much and it makes me feel inadequate. I'm a real person, though, and I have real person problems like having basically nothing figured out yet. Everyone is hurting in similar ways. Everyone is scared. It's the human condition.

I have to focus on the here and now. The truth is that I will never ever know what college is going to be like right up until the first day when it's off to the races. I just will have absolutely zero clue which parts will suck and which will be cool and which are things I want to do but do not yet know how. I will have to grow. And that's scary.

The vindictive part of my brain is saying that I'm no good at any of that, that I'm going to fail and suck and ruin my life through my poor decisions. I've already failed so much. That only means I know how to keep going, though. I can't let that stop me from fucking up some more, and then making more bad judgment calls, and after that going out and doing everything wrong. That's growing up. You're going to grow up a lot.

Even if you suck ass and aren't the person you want to be in college... so what? Thinking from the future's perspective, you will look back and cringe at your college self as much as you do to your high school self. That's growing up. You're going to grow up a lot.

You will fail, and you will be better because you did. Don't let the fear keep you from getting one mistake closer to being who you always wanted to be.

People make mistakes.

It's all a part of growing up,

and you never really stop growing.

- Duke of Nuts, Adventure Time