I’m currently at this juncture and trying to decide whether to go back to school and start entirely fresh or to hold out for another year or two to see how things go. The anxiety of what the future may or may not hold is real and I’m just standing here, watching the distances shorten faster and faster while still not knowing.

What’s your take, Beeple?

  •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) English
    8•11 months ago

    Not sure if knowing more about your career path, skillset, and planned change could help in giving you better advice… all I can say is: I was in a similar spot once. And tell you a story.

    Once upon a time… I had to choose between going to college, or jumping into a job offer and leaving college for maybe later. Had about 4h to decide, but I took inventory of all I knew, asked some people, and based on my skills, career and abilities, everyone told me to ditch the job, college was more important and would get me more doors to open. I kind of knew that was “supposed to be” the answer too, “learn to fish” and all that, and was eager to take that path… so I did that, passed on the job, went to college.

    Some time later, life happened, it became harder and harder to stay in college, so I dropped out and jumped into some jobs. As it turned out, none were like the one I had passed on. Then life happened again, and working became harder… life happened again, and forced me to switch and twist my career… and life kept happening, and messing things over and over, up until right now. It hasn’t really stopped yet.

    Had I picked not to go to college that year, things would have been different. Hard to say whether for the better or worse… even if I’m 99% convinced it would’ve been better, and I could’ve gone back to college at any point.

    …or maybe not, maybe life would have kept happening, just in some other ways, messing up things in that other path I didn’t take.

    In hindsight, I know I took a bad path, but I can’t know whether the other would’ve been necessarily better. Thinking back to that moment, all the data I had back then, pointed to the choice I did make, so I don’t think I really made a mistake, even if it didn’t pan out nearly as planned.

    Turns out, life has its ways to really mess up a lot of plans… but you don’t really have a choice, you make some plans, to the best of your knowledge and abilities, and then… who knows, maybe they pan out, maybe they don’t.

    So my advice would be: make your plans, to the best of your knowledge and abilities… make a pro/con list, weigh the probabilities, ask people for input… but if the anxiety is too much, just stop thinking about it, toss a coin, whatever.

    You can’t know what the future will hold, can’t know whether the best of your decision making will pick a good, or even a better path, not even in hindsight… so just make a decision, see how life unfolds, and don’t worry too much, it will be whatever it will be.

    Good luck.