Talking about the future, we have to look past, don’t we? It’s been hard since I flew back from S, a small city in A Province, my hometown, to where I currently work. Hard, because the fast pace here has been colliding with my small-city mindset, and it is not that easy to transfer from my carefree days in my bed in my hometown.
This Friday this might have been what’s really bothering me: I suddenly found out that almost all colleagues of mine have been promoted in the new year: although title doesn’t say much about their power or authority in my current workplace, it sure reminds me of my future.
They all say and ask, what you will be when you are close to 30 years old? In the Chinese idiom’s sense, 30 is the age when one finds himself a position in the society, and starts to really take the responsibility of an accomplished man. Ridiculously enough, it is hard for me to ensure its occurrence when I am to be 30 years old.
Am I going to spend the next several years still, in this university? It feels as though the past year and a half here has been more than enough, especially when I constantly heard from my mother during my visit home about her complaint of how little I earn. What’s bugging me is that, under my current mindset, I sincerely can’t think of a better job for me to balance my work and interest. The problem is that, both of them are not very profitable.
I love the atmosphere of my current workplace, and that is not a lie. My colleagues are willing to help me learn through my mistakes, and yet I sometimes still feel that I am not a necessary part of the team. I suddenly realized that during the last 18 months I did not fully interact with the team’s core business, I have been more of a supporting role, finishing all kinds of what some people would call “dirty work”. Am I really happy with where I am? I doubt that.
Talking with W, one of my high school best friends, doesn’t help much, but he sure is the first person I shared these thoughts with. Talking about this aloud makes me feel pointless, as though I am only here to fulfill someone else’s purpose, as though I am drifting in the dark space with no border for me to feel even one millionth of another piece of the solid ground. That thought might easily send me to panic.
Talking might not be the solution, but it might help me calm down. As of this morning, I feel calm, and the unwillingness of returning to work has been decreased - the problem, though, is going to haunt me for quite some time. The problem is that, with the current situation, I simply would not be happy for long - which might make me want to change where i live and work, which might cause the breakup of a committed relationship, which might cause more and more holes in my heart that can’t hold more sadness than it already does.
And every time I start to think about the causes and consequences, the question of “why bother” shows up in my head. What on earth is the point? I simply don’t know, and simply am tired of the soul searching of its answer. But time goes on, and life goes on, and a thousand of other things simply go on. Every time my mind flows here, the door to the actual answer becomes even farther — as if I already am stuck in a death loop, round and round.
