Do I want tuna or do I want egg salad? Do I want to wear yoga pants or a dress?
AH DECISIONS I just can’t take it. Decisions give me major anxiety.
Today I went with egg salad. And a maxi skirt.
I’m just kidding. While I do over-analyze lunch decisions and what to wear (yoga pants for the win 98% of the time), I’m talking about life decisions.
*I’m about to let you all into my head a little more than usual. Just saying…
When I started college, everyone used to say “ohhhh, it’s okay if you don’t know what to do! You have plenty of time!” with one of those half smirk smiles and a pat on the back. But, you see, I didn’t need any of that because I knew what I wanted to do! I was a nutrition major on a very set path to graduate, get a dietetic internship, sit for the RD exam and move on with my life. I actually kind of felt sorry for all of those people that were confused or doubted themselves and their abilities. Because I had it all figured out. Well, guess what? Now I’m one of those people AND I’m not a freshman. Enter anxiety. Enter over-thinking everything. Enter list-making. Enter depressing text messages sent to Russ with hope that he can somehow tell me what I should do with my life (No pressure).
None of those things help me. They just make it worse, actually. You see, I started having doubts/ second thoughts/ other goals freshman year. So I jumped on a new bandwagon to start going down a different career path, but I quickly fell off that bandwagon, hit my head and didn’t look back for a couple years after I was getting a D in chemistry. So that’s freshman year. As time ticked by, I kept chugging along with my nutrition classes, but every three months or so, I was knocking on my advisor’s door to tell her how I wasn’t so sure…blah, blah, blah. She told me that she has never had a student that is so wishy-washy about either being a dietician, or doing something else, and maybe deep down, I know what I want, I’m just not ready to commit.
So much truth in what she said. However, the problem is…I have major problems with commitment! You mean I can’t change my mind? Fact: I still have the tag on my maxi skirt because I want to make sure I really do like it. If that’s not a red flag, I’m not sure what is. But that’s clothes, and I’m trying to talk about life.
At some point during the summer, after long conversations with myself (in my head, for the most part. I do fear that some of them were out loud without me realizing), I decided that I’m going to go for it! I’m going to suck it up and go down a different path! I can’t tell you how relieved I was to have a plan and to have a goal for myself. I didn’t tell anyone I made a decision though, for fear that this current semester would scare me away, just like last semester did. I was so utterly burnt out by the end of last semester that feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy in what I want to do literally flooded my mind. If I can barely get through a semester of genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anatomy II, and nutrition, what in the world would lead me to believe I can get through even harder classes?!
Well, that brings me to here and now, where I am confused and so unbelievably afraid at failing and/or wanting to quit. I think this is normal, at least I hope so. I don’t know what the point of this post is. Maybe to get this all off my chest, or maybe for anyone else that is confused about their life and feels like they need to have it all figured out.
Here’s what I do know is true:
- I want to work with people.
- I want to help people in a big way.
- I’m willing to work hard (or, very hard).
- I’m afraid to mess up/ fail/ etc.
I think it will all work itself out in the end. By “the end”, I mean I better get it together before October or I just may end up living in my parents crawl space. And if it doesn’t all work out….well, at least we have yoga pants and egg salad sandwiches to soak up our tears, right?
That’s a joke.