Even since I finished school I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study… Am I supposed to know at age 16 what I want to do for the rest of my life??? What I’m good for?? In the last ten years since I graduated from High School, I’ve pursued more careers that most people in their live do: Law School (twice), Culinary arts, Graphical Design (twice), Vet School, Commercial Aviation, etc… And being a failure on all of them, until I pursued Hotel & Restaurant Management, and everything seemed to go extremely well, good grades, with not so many Relapses on Depression, self-harm and Voluntary Seclusion.
Until now, when I’m on my last year of College. I really, really feel like I can’t go on Anymore, but I promised my mother I would finish this, because she was so disappointed that the “smart, happy and sociable little girl” she used to know, went downwards over the years, and let’s be honest, no one likes to feel like they are their parent’s biggest disappointment, even if sometimes you don’t know if you either love them or hate them.
So, I find myself in the disjunctive of either committing suicide before the semester starts in March, or keep pushing myself until December, give my mother my “college Title”, and then Killing myself… I don’t want to waste that money, but I don’t want to go knowing I couldn’t accomplish anything good in my life…
5 comments
You come across as an intelligent person so I’m left wondering if it’s really that you “couldn’t” succeed at all these different things you tried, or on some subconscious level you just didn’t want to succeed at these things because you didn’t care about them. The sooner you finish something and graduate, the sooner you’re expected to do something with what you learned.
I always felt the same confusion about how exactly you’re supposed to know what you want to do for the rest of your life when you’re 18. People who seem to be born with this automatic sense of what they want to do with their life are lucky.
Like you it’s almost ten years since I got out of high school and I still don’t know what I’m doing either. Already tried 4 or 5 jobs, left them all because the experience of the work was soul crushing, now I sit here unemployed with no future.
In my case I don’t think I can find anything that interests me because nothing sounds fun for 40+ hours per week for the rest of my life. Asking what job I want to do is like asking which finger I’d like to have chopped off first. None, thanks.
Maybe you’re the same in that you just can’t find something that resonates with you strongly enough that you actually feel an interest in doing it. Are you going to be able to do something with your hotel & restaurant management skills that will actually make you want to get out of bed in the morning when your alarm goes off for the rest of your life?
It’s your life, don’t worry so much about disappointing anyone else, they don’t have to live your life. Especially when the entire premise of your question is silly, pretty sure committing suicide will overrule everything else in terms of your mother being disappointed, so whether or not you finish college first isn’t going to mean a thing in the end if you insist that you’ll be dying either way. I doubt she’ll find comfort in hugging your college degree and saying “at least she finished this” after you’re gone.
I know it sucks struggling to find something to be passionate about in life. Especially when you’re trying to be passionate about which form of slave labor you’d like to subject yourself too for the rest of your life. I’m the last person in the world who can offer any answers, I’m just as confused.
@ThousandCuts (this has nothing to do with this response, but with the comment you left on something i posted earlier. and you’re completely right: it was kind of nauseating, and i just took it down altogether. i wrote it for myself, i should’ve kept it to myself, and i doubt that reading it was ever gonna do anyone else much good, which is the entire point of this site. anyway, i appreciated the bluntness of your perspective – it’s easy to lose sight of how we come across sometimes.)
I used to think there were things i “really wanted” to do… but literally everything i’ve dug deep enough into, to see how it really works, has changed my mind, upon seeing how the experience of applying it will play out in a life lived by such pursuits/activities.
The problem is that the system is wrong, and too many people “buy into it,” and perpetuate it, because they either don’t know any better, or they (by design) have no better alternative.
I would be willing to work 4 hours a day, 4 days a week, doing pretty much anything, as long as it was Enough. I’m not going to do the 40+ hours a week thing, unless it’s something i actually want to do… but no such thing exists.
About the only seemingly viable option, is to start a business that you don’t have to personally micromanage, and sell things to people who like and can afford whatever you’re selling. Or you could try being a “confidence artist…” but i tend to think that’s normally not such a good option for most people.
The world is not, and will never be, what most of us are raised to believe and expect it to be. This indoctrinated “belief,” is the only real barrier preventing people from seeing the truth… and when those of us who do, see that truth, there isn’t much, if anything, anyone can do, to convince us to comply.
You can only find out when enough is enough when you fail. Even millionaires are never content to sit on their fortune. They keep investing until they take a hit. People generally look for ways to improve themselves until they reach a point in life when they can’t find a reason to carry on or come to a dead end. Staying still or even worse going backwards is depressing. When you find you can’t move forward switch to something that you enjoy and will never tire of doing. We have a lifetime to find out the things we like and are good at. Life is about longevity. If you find there is nothing else and you can’t make progress it then becomes a war of attrition.
The glory is not in never falling down, it is in getting up when we do fall down.
I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
— Michael Jordan