Restless
It began last night.
It’s hard to describe if you’ve never experienced it before. It’s a restless feeling. A dissatisfaction with your current state, your current work, and your current results. It’s a longing to do something—anything—that matters. Something that counts.
Not making sense, or hitting close to home?
Being the biggest critic of my own work often leaves me reflecting on where I am and where I’m going. I don’t want to live in the same monotonous cycle of life that so many people do—pumping out rhetoric projects, day in and day out. I’m frustrated with the typical cycle of eating, sleeping, and going to school only to come out on the other end a perfected robot from the mold that our society has defined.
I guess I’m exaggerating at this point.
Tomorrow is the start of a new school year. Grade 11. And while school is a major part of every student’s life, I can’t help but feel limited by it. In all practicality, it is absurd to believe that one’s education is a mere “one size fits all” formula that we can simply take and apply to everyone in the world and expect perfect results. Yes, some may fit the mold, and are often regarded by our society as the “intelligent beings”. Others may feel uncomfortable with the mold, and grow to view at school as a negative. And some will fall completely out of the mold, where they can do one of two things:
Drop out, or endure.
None of these categories are any better or worse than any other. Yet they all provide their own unique set of challenges. And I find myself falling into the third category.
When people ask the inevitable question of “what do you want to be when you grow up?”, I have no answer for them. Not because I haven’t spent hours upon hours thinking about it—quite the opposite actually. I can’t answer them because most of my goals and dreams don’t fall into a specific group or template that society has previously defined.
Quite the precarious place to be.
I’ve concluded that I will be satisfied with nothing less than doing what I love. And too often do people settle for less than the best because of the limitations in their lives. Having both age and school as factors that are currently holding me back from accomplishing some of my dreams, I’ve decided to tackle them as best I could.
This year, I will be completing both Grade 11 and 12. Finishing fifteen credits in a period of ten months. Sure, it’s going to be a lot of work, but I can’t recall ever being this excited about going back to school. Because I know that I will be working like crazy towards my dreams. It can’t get much better than that.
At the same time, I will be focusing on some other priorities in my life as well. Primarily, consistently writing on this blog, developing my love for photography, and podcasting on Discovr (which I am pouring new life into as of September). I also have a few other hobbies in mind, that I am interested in pursuing over this next year.
What will I do after this year, when I’m done with high school? I’m not sure yet. But I sure that if I keep pursuing my dreams and pointing myself in the right direction, the right path will be revealed.
