somewhere along the line of chasing the leaderboard of grades, internships, jobs, prestige, i lost the feeling of having fun in the process. i become so fixated on the goal that i forgot what i was even chasing for.
in high school, i was a content creator. i drew, made videos, and merch. i was satisfied making cute art and i did it for no one else but myself.
my art instagram motivated me to draw everyday, my youtube account was my avenue to share my projects, and i kept my friends updated on my latest endeavors on my channel. at first, numbers and gaining traction never came to my mind.
but i slowly realized that i started to care more about the numbers even though i wasn't trying to. i cared about them because they were available and it was easy to measure my performance and compare it to others. even when i knew they didn't tell the full story, i believed the numbers as fact. i obsessed over how i was getting less views than someone else who had put less effort in. how was this fair?
i see youtubers i watch go through a similar phase of optimizing their channel only to come down and be disillusioned or quit youtube altogether. it's so easy to let the algorithm take control and have it dictate what to think. it's hard to avoid the numbers in such a precise and measurable world. it's hard to shut that part of the brain off when this is what the metrics say.
where did i get so caught up in these arbitrary measurements and forget to have fun? could i keep having fun throughout my career or does it inevitably subside away?
i was in the locker room at my gym the other day with a couple old ladies and i heard them talking about planning to go see a play, meet their friends for dinner, and go to walking clubs together. it sounds really similar to the life i have now in school and just enjoying and having fun learning, but i realize this will not be forever, and cynical me thinks that post-grad will not be like this. i realize that my life now is more like these retired old ladies in school and won't be that way until way later. part of me is scared of leaving school, and going to the workforce and halting my ability to learn as explore as freely as i do in school. i want to cherish this much free time and freedom now before it's gone. i don't want to forget to have fun and doing things that don’t have a career-focused goal.
"rather than subordinating to existing terminologies and donning convenient imitations, it can be forgiving to surrender to your internal discord: to admit that yes, it is absurd, it doesn’t make any sense, but I'll do it anyway." – jaron