When You Have No Idea What You’re Doing With Your Life

Girl who has no idea what she's doing with her life
Unsplash / Dmitriy Ilkevich

You feel like all of your friends are ahead of you. They might be working a part-time job just like you are, but at least they know where they are heading. At least they picked a major they are passionate about pursuing. At least they have a general plan for their future.

Meanwhile, you have no idea what you’re doing with your life. You feel lost. Confused. Unsure of whether you should take this path or that one.

When you were younger, you never thought it would be this hard. You were actually looking forward to growing up, getting your license, and getting the hell out of your house. Now you realize how hard those things are when it comes down to it. Paying taxes. Paying rent. Paying for gas money. Paying for food. Paying. Paying. Paying. 

You barely have a social life anymore, because you spend the majority of your week working. Trying to earn an even bigger paycheck than the one from last week. You don’t have any time for yourself, let alone time to get together with long lost friends.

You feel like you exist to work — but you don’t even like your current job. You aren’t where you want to be in life. Not that you know where you want to be. You haven’t exactly figured that part out yet.

You feel like you are fumbling through adulthood, pretending to have it together when you are secretly falling apart. And you feel like you are the only one.

Whenever someone posts a first-day-of-work picture on Facebook or a photograph of their first sonogram or a tour of their new house, a little piece of you hates them. You hate that they are more successful than you are. You hate that they are happy. You hate that other people your age are acting like full-grown adults when you still feel like a kid thrust into the real world.

You don’t understand how people as young as you have already landed their dream jobs, their dream spouse, their dream house, their dream life, because you still struggle to do your laundry without shrinking it. To fill your fridge with healthy meals. To wake up without snoozing your alarm at least once. To make it through the week without cracking open cheap beer.

You have no idea what you’re doing with your life — but you aren’t the only one. You aren’t behind. You aren’t a failure. There isn’t a set timeline that you are required to follow. Everyone moves at their own pace. Everyone has different milestones and reaches those milestones at different times.

You are not as alone as you think. You are not the only twenty-something questioning who you are and why you’re here and where you’re meant to go next. You are not the only twenty-something who has doubts about their abilities, who compares themselves to the rest of the world and comes up short.

Stop acting like no one else understands what you’re going through — because almost everyone doesThought Catalog Logo Mark

Holly is the author of Severe(d): A Creepy Poetry Collection.

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