When I Just Don't Know

It’s like almost every moment is an I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-my-life moment and it gets tiring regurgitating the same things in my head, reading all these so-called inspirational articles only to be inspired momentarily and confused the next, listening to broken record sermons from well-meaning family and friends, being encouraged and discouraged by advice and circumstance, praying and getting answers in complex cryptic codes that I think pointed this way but more clues lead further astray on an unmarked path illuminated by moody fireflies that keep you lost. 

There’s the opinion from my father that I should be a designer and the long frustrated expectation of my mother for me to be an architect.  My father tells me he knows me best, my talents and what I’m capable of, but somehow I’m not convinced.  I don’t know what it will take to convince me because I think I just have to be convinced myself period, but I’m not so I continue to live an unconvincing life.  Well, it’s only partly that way because the “work” and “career” portion is the most unconvincing part.  I’m happy with where I’m at with my family, blessed with the greatest privilege of maximizing time with my four year old and one year old boys.  However, this professional part has had me hanging almost eight years now on the brink of nervous despair and disrepair. 

I dream of having my own business but then my parents don’t think I’m cut out for business.  I know that’s only a pathetic excuse (as my sister, Mariel would agree) and that if I wanted to, I could be a successful entrepreneur.  But then I keep having these business ideas with nowhere to go, afraid of putting capital where my mouth is except for the fishpond business which my dad says is not really my line because I’m not an agriculturist.  I do have money down on that one and it’s just a matter of months before we see the results.

I dream of having a SINFULLY huge (as in Bill Gates huge) amount of passive income so I invested more than three years attending seminars and courses to improve financial literacy and I’m very happy with what I’ve learned and even more excited with what I’ve applied while getting other people close to me introduced to the rudiments of money management.  I figured if I have this “trust fund” life, that will give me freedom to pursue all the advocacies I want.

So there’s this tension between other people’s expectation that I am an artist and that I’m artistic and thus should use that in building my career and on the other hand, there’s this disinterest in that area because there’s this other part which wants to emerge but is just not emerging, like two monsters in the lake battling it out to the death when I’ve got to somehow keep both alive, fed and satisfied.

In short, because it’s in my face, I can’t recognize anything but the emergency of this lack of emerging. And the only thing I know is I don’t know.