There Are No “Supposed-Tos”

I’m dog-sitting again. And I’ll dog-sit a lot more this summer.

The best part about dog-sitting is having this massive house to yourself with all the amenities you didn’t earn: an animal that wants to cuddle with you, a winding forest trail that jets off the backyard, and the silence to think. The space to not be distracted. When I say I don’t feel like I earned any of this, I didn’t work hard to afford this house in the sticks of Raleigh. And I didn’t pick out this fluffy dog nor this voluptuous sofa I am lounging on while staring up at the ceiling all morning. But lucky for me, I have it for a little bit and I certainly will not waste it.

I feel like I conceptualize life so differently than the way I did a few months ago. Radically and confidently so.

I think: be open to all of it and you just can’t f*ck up THAT bad. There are so many possibilities of output that you can’t even begin to conceptualize. There are so many endings that do not cross your mind, that you do not conceive. So it’s way more fun not expecting anything at all.

I have faced pushback for not having a “defined” plan at this point in my life from some people. It stung for a while because it felt like they had told me that I was doing something “wrong” and it didn’t feel wrong to me.

Some people think that my perhaps untraditional way of life is careless and other people think it’s riveting. I obviously agree with the latter. But there was a time that the doubt of other people had seeped into my own perception of myself.

I travel a lot, for long periods of time too. I spend time in other countries exploring, visiting friends, seeing family. (Well, all my blood relatives live here in NC, but I consider the family I au paired for in the Netherlands to be just as close to me. ) I work odd jobs for random and uncertain amounts of time, I complain about an $8 matcha in my city but of course I’ll buy a flight to see my friend in Greece if she invites me. I would train Jiu Jitsu all day if I could, and I kind of did for a few weeks in Mexico. I would role-play being some professional athlete even though I’m still just a humble white belt. 

Bujutsu, CDMX

I have had people ask me when I’m going to settle down, chill out, and get a “normal” and "stable" job. It bothered me because they didn’t know that I had been looking for a long time, even while abroad where I was seemingly only fun-maxxing. They didn’t know that I had been spending hours on LinkedIn every week, editing the living hell out of my CV, and scheduling Zoom meetings and coffee dates every couple of days with people in corporate jobs to ask them about their professional journeys and solicit career advice. They also didn’t know I was growing a marketing business and finding clients and doing brand consulting and spending way much more time on the internet than I would ever dream of. They didn’t know that I cried out of pure frustration spending so much time pursuing a “traditional” job just to not be accepted by any. 

But I learned the hard way that I don’t have to justify or explain myself every single time somebody is skeptical about what I’m doing with my life.

And I know the job market is ass. I know I'd be a fine candidate anywhere- I’m educated, I know my right from my left, and I would probably be good at any office job they hired me for unless it was incredibly monotonous and I lost the will to live. The job search is a “numbers” game they say, that you have to cast a wide net. But there are moments where it feels personal and emotionally taxing. Regardless, a corporate job might not even be meant for me. I mean it could be, hell, I don’t know. I also think it would be dope to be an electrician or something totally random. There is no right way to do any of this.

Those questions from people bothered me because not only did they not see the invisible effort I was making, their commentary made me feel like I was doing the “wrong” thing.

Some people in particular had opinions about the way I live that hurt more than others. It’s easy to brush off a stranger’s idea of you rather than a friend or a family member. People will see uncertainty as chaos, and others might find it all really exciting. Personally, I find uncertainty to be my “flow state”. I really do thrive not having a routine or everything written out for me. I love not having it all written out because when I don't construct this plan full of expectations, it has been my experience that I am far more enamored by the things I did not plan for.

I also just trust myself, I trust that I’m not this lazy piece of shit. For now, I make enough money with my random hodge podge of hustles to do the things I want to do. And because I’m not a lazy piece of shit, I know I won’t consistently choose the easiest and quickest solution for everything. But even if someone did choose the easiest and quickest option, that is their prerogative and I'm sure they have some good stories to tell too.

Everyone’s way of life is oh so particular and in the end, nobody has to understand it but you. Or, moreover, that's what I am realizing at least. 

I care way more about being a good friend, a savvy daughter, a kind stranger than I do about any fabricated entity of who I am that lives inside the heads of other people, even just in the fleeting moment that I may cross their minds. I know that nobody is studying me and my habits more than I study them myself. But after all, we are opinion-forming creatures and we all exist, in some form, in the minds of somebody else who has their own beliefs of the world and their own construct of life’s absolutes.

Maybe we satisfy those beliefs they hold about how things and people ought to function. Or maybe we explicitly defy them.

Either way, it’s not our responsibility to curate how other people perceive us. It actually does not matter whether you swim upstream, downstream, or even sideways in the consciousness of other people.

I feel like someone put me through this ketamine induced therapy without me knowing. Life feels so different. My decisions don’t feel so all-consuming anymore. I don’t need to be hunting for this special key that it is supposed to unlock something that I am supposed to have. I don’t feel this need to be stepping on the correct stones and make sure I take the path leading to where I think I should go. Silly goose, there are no “correct” paths!

So anyways. If anyone reading this was ever at one time confused about what I was doing with my life, you should know, that I got it all under control.

Or rather, I don’t. Because none of us do.

But that is kind of the magic, ain’t it?