What the hell am I doing?
These are the words that floated through his mind as he sat there trying to figure what was going to happen next. For all his life he was incapable of keeping to one direction. Sure there were times he came close but in the end it always ended at some point. Yes all things come to an end but for him, they were never endings of his choosing.
He wanted to be more than what he was and what he was consisted of surviving. He needed more, he needed to have direction, and he needed an end goal.
What goal am I striving for?
The answer to that question he knew. He wanted to create and help people achieve their goals.
How am I going to achieve it?
He was well into his 30’s, knew what he wanted to be when he grew up, but still was unable to understand how to achieve what he wanted. Did he want a steady job where someone told him what to do everyday or did he want to be the boss? After having been through a lot of schooling, he had applied to many jobs. Nothing came of it. He had a 9-5 that allowed him to be self sufficient, though he needed more.
He wanted to be doing what he worked so very hard for. Of the four times he went through college, he paid for three. So he knew he was willing to work for it. But the difference between school and finding his vocation is school had a finishing line, the diploma. In the real world, unless you had family or a really good friend to hire you, there was no foreseeable finish line. He was almost there. He could taste the freedom and feeling of accomplishment he almost has. However in this day and age, its feels like it’s not what you know, its who you know.
So once again he is back at the original question.
What the hell am I doing?
He realized he was thinking in circles and that thinking wasn’t really going to get him anywhere. Sometimes thinking only gets you halfway. So when you get to the halfway mark and it just leads you to back to the beginning, try adding something to it. So he started doing. It didn’t matter what he was doing, he just needed to do something.
On the first day, he did it a little bit. It was a start. But then he got distracted and he couldn’t get back to it. He tried three times, but it just didn’t stick. On the second day, he continued his activity. He got more done. He started to feel a bit better about himself. Sure he was still a long, long, long way off from his goal, but he was actually doing something. On the third day, he watched TV. Old habits die HARD.
But then he went to make dinner and as he was waiting for the oven to come up to temperature, he found himself sitting down and finishing what he had begun. That’s when it hit him. He knew it all along but sometimes it takes a while for it to sink in. What he was doing was the start. Accomplishments will come later, but you don’t accomplish anything unless you start somewhere.
Sure, he is going to get lost a lot. You could say, he had been lost most of his life. But at this moment, simply by starting somewhere and finishing what he had begun, he started to figure out what the hell he was doing.
And just like that, he had finished. He turned off the oven, put on his shoes and coat, picked up his project and went out. When he came back he didn’t have it anymore. He had given it away.
He was happy.
He made dinner, got cleaned up, and went to bed.
Tomorrow, he decided he was going to do it again. But different. Just like that, he didn’t feel so lost anymore.