Pulled in the right or wrong direction

Do you ever feel like you’re being pulled in two directions at once? Constantly? That to me, is what life is like in your twenties, when you are trying to choose the ‘right’ career path. There’s the direction that you’ve always dreamed of — to some, it’s the unrealistic direction. Then there’s the stable direction. The direction that makes the most ‘sense’. However, this route is not as fulfilling as the first one. You’re not as excited to go down this road because you know what is waiting for you at the end. It’s predictable. It’s comfortable. It’s not the dream direction. But it makes sense. It’s stable, remember?

Choosing between two careers can be one of the most paralysing things. You’re thinking too much. Weighing out your options and what is the ‘right’ move. ‘Analysis is paralysis’. You find that you’re not really taking the steps in either direction or if you are moving towards the stable one, you feel like you’re about to hit a dead end.

Do I chase my passion or do I chase stability? Do I chase fulfilment or do I chase money? Do I chase the unknown or do I chase certainty? Truth is, there are pros and cons to both. When you chase your passion, especially if it is in the creative industry, there is no stability there. At all. Whatsoever. But what you supplement in stability you get back in purpose, drive, and pleasure.

‘Do I chase fulfilment or do I chase money?’ You could have all the money in the world and not be fulfilled. What kind of life is that? You want to feel content. You want to connect to something with such passion that the money, no matter how much or how little it is, doesn’t matter. But. We live in the real world. We’re living through some rough times. The economic crisis. The cost-of-living crisis. The job market crisis. We need money and lots of it just to survive and have basic necessities. And let’s be honest, creatives need money to be able to support themselves when they’re between jobs. So, does that mean we have to sacrifice fulfilment for money? I don’t know.

‘Do I chase the unknown or do I chase certainty?’

But what I do know is that in the unknown there is excitement, there is opportunity. There is hope. To chase certainty can be boring for most of us. What’s the point of reading a book if we know how it’s going to end? There’s no adventure. No mystery. No excitement.

Do I follow my head or my heart?

Who knows?

Maybe we’re not supposed to know the answer yet. Maybe we’ll never know. You always hear stories of people in their 40s having a complete career change. Maybe we’ll start on one path and then later down the line, we’ll decide it’s no longer for us. Maybe our dreams and passions that we have now will no longer be fulfilling in the future. As humans we always want more. More money. More success. More time. Maybe even the thing that we so desperately want right now won’t be enough for us once we finally achieve it and we may constantly chase more.

It's important to try and stay optimistic during these times and try to enjoy the uncertainty. The positives are; our life could go in many directions. There are so many possibilities. We’re not at the end yet, that means there is more things to unfold in our story. It’s true, you don’t want to have achieved everything just like that because we need things to strive towards otherwise, we will lack purpose.

Just food for thought.