Almost turning 24, I am only one year removed from university- a length of time short enough to recall pivotal moments and impressions, yet substantial enough to forget finer details and insignificant characters. It’s strange seeing how one year of “adulting” and working in the real world can change someone. For me, the most drastic shift between university life and adult life isn’t the structured time schedule (skipping class is replaced by clocking in mandatory work days) nor the stable source of income (I no longer feel as bad as spending $8 on a subway sandwich for lunch), but the landscape of goals.
Though the day to day in university was dynamic and tough- a fire hydrant flow of assignments and midterms filled my schedule which saw me continuously grind on a baseline 6 hours of sleep- my goals were well defined. I knew that by the end of the week I had to submit my 5 question problem set on bridge building in civil engineering and ,by the end of the month, I had two big midterms in calc 2 and waves. Through these defined goals, there was a fundamental purpose in perpetual work- I wanted to meet these deadlines and exams with as much confidence as possible and do the best I could do. I wasn’t necessarily shooting for a super high grade; I just wanted a result that would make myself proud of the effort I put in. Despite that coinciding with high grades (gotta measure “performance” somehow right?), I wasn’t working so much for achievement but for desire of satisfaction and fear of disappointment. Whether that was a positive motivation factor could be debated, but what cannot be debated was the determination I had to perform the best I could in those deadlines and testing moments.
Adult life is much different. Where university life is akin to driving short spurts to convenient stores, take out restaurants, and gas stations on the way to a final destination, adult life is more like driving down a long highway full of twists and turns but barren of any checkpoints. The worst of all- there is no destination either. Asphalt meets more asphalt as adult life continues on. Sure university has prepared me for engineering, math, and networking, but it has not prepared me for an undefined structure of living. There are no external deadlines. No one telling me to perform. Nothing actively hunting me down.
In the midst of all this undefined blurriness, adult life is frightening. Questions like “what should I be working for” and “what should be my intermediate goal posts” constantly pop up. It is up to me to determine, for better or for worse, what I am to strive for. While I mull over these questions, time does not wait. In fact, time passes fast. Days may feel long, but weeks and months are short. If these questions are left unanswered, a year may be gone without any change or improvement. While I spent my days grinding problem sets and exams in university without ever needing to substantially question my ultimate purpose, I now spend my days investing into work, hobbies, and friends, constantly wondering if I am investing my time into the right things. The freedom of adulthood captures uncomfortable uncertainty in a way that structured university live does not.
I wrestled with this adulthood struggle a lot in the past year. I didn’t have any well defined goals immediately present, which fuelled a feeling of purposeless, as if I was screaming into the void only for the wind of adulthood to drown out my pleads and to sedate me in settling with a melancholic version of reality. It was only recently where I was actively reminded about the importance of purposeful goal setting.
While I (and I’m sure everyone else) knew the importance of proactive goal setting, I never really took action on it. Part of it was weakness- it was easier to go with the flow of normal life than to strive for something. Another part was fear- it was scary to try something new and put actions to spewed words. For me, that action was signing up for my first powerlifting meet.
Already watching a powerlifting meet pass this past May, I was haunted by the real reason why I didn’t sign up. Seemingly reasonable excuses such as “I need to drop wright” and “my bench press form isn’t optimal” could only alleviate so much personal disappointment before I faced the true reason of not signing up: fear of doing something new and the uncomfortable reality that came with it. And so, I toiled in my workout plan with no deadline, falling bit by bit out of love with fitness, something that gave me an unparalleled amount of meaning throughout life.
When I finally gained to courage to stop thinking and just sign up, the predicted fear of trying something new came into fruition. But like in university, a fear far greater than doing something new overshadowed everything else: the fear of disappointing myself. I had focused meaning again. Though I may not end up partaking in another powerlifting meet, I found something to work towards with my undivided attention. There was meaning in fitness again- it was sacred and, as accordingly, I was to worship and sacrifice for it
My antidote to adult life quickly became artificially putting something challenging in front of me with a strict and well-defined deadline. I no longer have to put a gun to my own head to inspire myself to work. Instead, I have given the gun to the invisible aether which holds it to my face, making its presence ever so apparent. I may no longer have control over the fact that the gun points towards me; however, I still have control over the size of the gun- the significant and sacredness of the goal.
For me, it just happens the size of the gun is as large as a tank cannon~