This is a very random and slightly personal post that I didn’t anticipate making it onto the blog. I write down a lot of thoughts that I have for post ideas but I don’t usually write them out. I guess I should talk about why I’ve been thinking about my future and why it really scares me. For one, I came back to the US in mid January for my Chinese New Year break.
I anticipated that I would stay in the country until the end of January as we assumed that COVID-19 would no longer be the concern that it has obviously begun. As classes were closed, I stayed back in the US and really began wondering if I could return to China. At this point, I would have been in China for six months. Six months felt like a good time period for me to evaluate my time in China. These were questions I had before coming to the city (and before my experience with China began.)
Did I want to stay in China?
Is my experience in China worth staying in this city for another six months?
Did I like my job?
Did I like this job enough to stay with it for another six months?
What do I want the rest of 2020 to look like for me?
What changes can I make now that will positivity impact the rest of 2020?
What changes can I make now that will positivity impact my future?
At the time that I created this lengthy list of questions, I didn’t know that my time in China would not be the most positive** one. I had anticipated on having a vastly different experiences to the one that I had. Now, knowing everything that I knew, answering these questions has left me feeling uncomfortable. I don’t know who to answer some of these questions and if I’m honest, some answers scare me. And thus, the title of this post: I don’t know what my future holds or what I want from it or how to go after it and it scares the hell out of me.
I’m going to spend the month of March trying to answer these questions without hesitation. I want to be as honest as possible with my thoughts and feelings as I can be. Even if the answers are not what I thought they would be or what I want them to be, I’ll have to own them.
**This is not to say that there is anything wrong with China or Shanghai. It just hasn’t been a good experience for me.
Do y’all ever give yourself a list of questions to ask yourself as a way to check in? How would you answer some (or all) of these questions? Are you scared that you might answer some of these questions in an unexpected way?
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