A New Direction

I have always had a little travel bug in me and it truly keeps coming out more and more as I get older. I was lucky and had the opportunity to be exposed to new places and different scenery my entire life. From the yearly Mazatlán trip my family took together, or camping all together in the summer. I even went to Australia in 5th grade. I have see places and met new faces, but in my head, I drank the Kool-Aid society sold me.

I always thought my job was to fit in, to go to college graduate with a job, find a career that I loved, something that paid for health insurance and settle down with a life with someone. Through out the past few years, I am not sure if who that person was is still a part of me. After the two initial years of Covid and moving back home with my family, I rediscovered the love of people and being home as well as the reminder of what living is. Six months ago I packed up all my stuff into my car and drove with my best friend, now roommate, to where we live in Denver. I have always dreamed of living in the city. Big city, lots of opportunity, lots to do and so much to discover. It has taken me about six months to plant my feet here. I am doing everything and more than I thought was possible, yet, the stability I once balanced my identity around, isn't giving me the life I crave.

I am not complaining by any means, here I have found a home, created memories, met someone I like to spend time with. I joined a gym, started a business and worked at a pizza place I have always wanted to work at. Yes I know, I am odd. But the job I am at, the job that was the entry level job that was supposed to be the beginning to where I wanted to be in 10 years, makes me dislike everything I thought I knew. This job is just a job, and that makes me so sad to say. My drive to be somewhere in 10 years is low and my faith in people and hospitality is even lower. Kindness was somewhere lost within the pandemic and hospitality isn't really about making someone's day anymore. Its about what they expect from you and how they act when they don't get it. I feel like I am wasting my time in a field where I am applying band aid to people who cut themselves on purpose. I see what the next 10 years could be in the field I am in and I don't think I want it, but I don't know what I want either.

Someone asked me where do I feel most at peace and my response gave me some insight to myself. I said, at the top of the mountain with shredded clothes and a breeze surrounded by water. That feeling of being accomplished of stretching your limits, exercising your mind, and accomplishing something that is beyond what I feel right now a career can give me. I feel like I have my whole life to work, but yet I could die tomorrow and my position would be replaced and forgotten. How the time spent with other and the places my eyes and lungs could see and breathe is something that dies with you. I don't think I want to drink the Kool-Aid anymore. Telling me we live to survive but you can survive better if you do XYZ.

Now, I crave stability and care about money more than I should, which is hard with this inner self wanting to break out and take the world by storm. But I don't think the van life is necessarily my style either. I guess what I am trying to say is, I spent my whole life saving and planning for the future, now I just want to live in the moment. I defiantly sound like my mom, which I used to think was a bad thing, now I'm thinking its a crucial point of my growth. Like I said I have my whole life to work, but imagine I don't wait till retirement to travel throughout the country. Live while I am still young enough to take advantage of it with people who wont be around for forever.

I took that leap, I quit my job that was the accomplishment of my identity. Now I am 25 years old with a degree working at a pizza place with high school students and my mental health is better, most days.

The other days I find my stress about where I am and who I am supposed to be creep up my back slowly and intentionally. Often in my head I feel split between the raging spirit who can look at my savings and say let's go somewhere, but internally I am calculating if I can even afford to go eat out this week. I feel undoubtably proud of myself and out of sorts with my life within releasing the same breath. I feel out of touch with myself and my dreams and what I want to do. I talk about this trip, manifest this energy like it is going to happen, because if I don't, then I look at myself in the mirror and see mediocrity.

I am at a standstill, the perfect age to claim a quarter life crisis, and uncomfortably content with where I am, and I don't what to do with that. I surround myself with people, yet am so lost within my own thoughts. I wish I could tell you where I belong, I wish I could tell someone I feel at home, I wish I could tell him that there is love, but I feel so detached from EVERYTHING. I am claiming adventure and being in the moment, but grappling with my loss of direction in myself. So though I feel lost in this moment, we must continue on with positive reinforcements. With that being said, here's to a new direction.