I feel like I'm, in a lot of ways, lacking in direction. Given that I hear that a lot of people around my age go through similar experiences this doesn't really come as a surprise to me. Even so, it is quite bothersome.
Mostly it bothers me because due to the uncertainty that I constantly have to face I waste a lot of time trying to decide what the best course of action would be. I also waste a lot of time trying to juggle a plethora of different goals at the same time. This in effect means that I can't reach any of them in any efficient manner, which is bad for progress and morale, which in turn then reinforces the uncertainty.
Given that I am a rather many-faced person when it comes to my ambitions and interests, it shouldn't really come as a shock to anyone to hear this. After all, who could try to code, draw, write, read, study, and sing every day without running into management issues pretty much immediately? However, pursuing this many goals certainly doesn't make it easy to decide on what to focus on on any given day.
I really don't want to drop anything either, since each and every one of those things has a lot of importance to me, for a variety of reasons. One could try to argue from a standpoint of practicality that some of these things probably would not help me in sustaining a living at all. However, given that I have no interest in money at all aside from the solitary concern of shelter and nutrition, this does not strike me as a good way of filtering the list. Neither do I want to give up trying to work on anything else merely because some things awaken a stronger interest within me than others.
However, I'm not only lost without direction in terms of what I want to put my interests in. It also extends out to what kind of career I should pursue. Here of course the most logical choice would be to work as a programmer… somehow. And that somehow is the problem. The only thing I do know from the brief nine months of internship I had is that I didn't particularly like to work in a company, even taking into account that I probably had it pretty damn good there, compared to the kinds of things I hear from most people in the profession. I'm really saddened to have this conflict here, because otherwise the decision would be rather clear. With this however, I'm already afraid to land in a bad spot without even having arrived at a time when I would have to consider that possibility.
Putting this all aside, there are even more things that I don't know how to steer right now. In terms of drawing, I have been undergoing an art style change for probably more than the past month and it's still ongoing. I'm rather lost as to how to put it all together properly and there doesn't seem to be any solution in sight. At various points I briefly think that I've finally figured it out, only to be dumped back into the dark the day after. Stylistics is an incredibly difficult topic, so it's natural that when one concerns themselves deeply with it a lot becomes wary, but it is nevertheless a big hindrance as it slows me down in a lot of ways.
Programming too is undergoing a bit of a problematic time right now, as I can't seem to decide on a project to focus on. There are a couple of major things that I should pour my attention on: Radiance specification, Radiance core fixes, and Parasol. However, since all of these tasks are rather large in mental overhead I need to do them one at a time in order to manage keeping everything tidy in my head and not wasting a lot of time trying to switch around. But I just can't seem to decide which one. All of them are facing problems that I don't particularly seem to want to solve, so I'm basically driving around a merry-go-round with all exits sealed off by a construction site.
Generally I just feel lost in every way. Anything I do feels uncertain and then I don't even know if I should be doing that or rather focus my attention on something else. And this uncertainty in itself creates a feedback loop that's been pinning me down more and more for a while now.
I don't know what to do.
Written by shinmera