Adrift

On finishing university, drowning in everyone else's advice, and the moment you decide to take the reins back.

I’m writing this on the deck of the Scillonian - a ferry taking me out to the Isles of Scilly on a research trip. The Atlantic is doing what the Atlantic does. Someone just threw up next to me from seasickness. I’ve moved.

Recently I’ve been in a bit of a slump. I wouldn’t say a dark place as such, more like the shadows in between the stars at night. I feel as if I am adrift and can’t work out how to put up my sail.

You finish uni and suddenly everyone has advice. Get a career. Get a job. But then someone else grabs your arm - no, stay away from a full-time job for as long as possible, I’d do it differently if I could. Save your money, be conservative. Go be free, you’ll never be this young again. Start a business. Don’t start a business, you’ll be a slave to it.

I’m drowning in it. And the worst part? As ashamed as I am to admit it, I haven’t been following my own advice. I am no longer enjoying the little things. All closed up like a clam.

All you ever hear is the world’s your oyster, you could do anything. But no one ever speaks about how insanely difficult everything is. How loud the noise gets. How easy it is to get lost in the current of life’s pressures. And truthfully, no one really understands it, not even other people going through the same thing.

Here’s what I actually believe: I need to live life a bit. Work in different places. See new things. Try different experiences. I am young and I will not be foolish and waste this life. But then again I won’t waste my younger years and end up with nothing either. These two opposing forces are wild. Both sing of freedom and living. Neither will shut up.

I refuse to believe that destroying my young body to live happily at 50 is right. I look around and see people who can’t do anything active, everyone’s got bad backs, lethargic lives built around staying still. That’s not it.

So I’m going to keep trying to do what I think is right. Stay true to myself. It’s so easy to get lost otherwise.

This is it. I’ve got to take the reins of this life, otherwise I’m going to be taken for a ride rather than be the rider.

God. I’ve fallen into the exact thing I always warned against. A shadow of my former self. Writing this on a ferry, sea spray on my face, someone else’s seasickness on my shoes, I’m telling myself what I should have been telling myself for months.

Wake up.

The sail’s right there. Put it up.

— Joe, somewhere in the Atlantic

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