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My time post-uni has dragged an unwilling spotlight onto what I desire to do and what I should choose to do for a realistic, sensible future. My heart desires freedom, the sensation of complete independence that I had felt standing in a new city during study abroad a year ago.
My brain longs for stability in a stoic financial definition that would enable me a good way of life when I can secure a graduate-level job. But how long will it take for that scenario to come to life? What future should I be planning for?
I feel like I would be cheating myself of the chance to explore a new place and have post-lockdown peace of mind if I stuck to the rational path. But ultimately, would the rational path become a dangerous loop of confusing the sensible option with what I truly need to be happy.
As someone, like many others, who find happiness and freedom in travelling I idolise a working career that enables me to have time to travel. Perhaps a career built on short-term contracts where I can save money and have the ability to pursue journeys to new places. Having presented this ideal future to a parental figure of Gen X age, they responded with an aloof face of ‘I’m not sure, it’s not the way I know to have stability and financial security’. This reaction was not surprising but resonated with the wealth of uncertainty that pursuing a life of freedom garners.
This pandemic feels (rightly so) a suspension of reality.
To fill this absence of structure, I call to the voices that are in this limbo with me to help steady my sanity and mentality - voices that belong to those my age who have no automatic inclination to assert authority of misplaced ‘experience’. The spotlight should fall on the collective rather than the solitary in this reality.
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