My Young-Life Crisis

What impacted who I am today?

Some time around junior year in high school, one can say I was having a young-life crisis. My life was missing something. I felt unhappy with life. As I walked home everyday from school by myself, I thought to myself, why do I feel this way? Why do I feel like something was missing in my life? I read self-improvement articles regarding How to find what you love to do in life and any article that I thought would pertain to my feeling of unhappiness and lack. As I really thought about why I was unhappy and felt like my life was missing something, I started to reach vague yet specific things I wanted to improve on. To put it simply, I was unhappy socially, and as I walked home everyday from school I felt like my current life was lacking purpose. I was going to school everyday only to go home later to study hard and do homework I was not interested in so I could potentially succeed in a career that I didn’t enjoy that much in the future. I didn’t have a steady group of friends to hang out with at the time. My social life was definitely transitioning at the time and I didn’t have any friends I was close with. At the time, these few guys I hung out with were just guys I could talk to during brunch. It’s not that I thought they were bad people but I never extended myself to get to know them better outside of school.

I was unhappy socially and life felt meaningless. These emotions really helped me in the long run. I learned mainly from brian kim, whose self-improvement articles and books really helped me answer a lot of questions regarding living a meaningful life. With his articles I was able to hit on tiny pieces of the puzzle to the question what I really wanted to get out of life. I knew I wanted more friends, I wanted to become socially confident, to be able to talk to girls, and I wanted to get a hot girl friend, I wanted to be able to have a great conversation with anyone  all inspired by the very first dating product I ever read: david deangelo’s double your dating. I wanted all these things but it seemed like I still couldn’t sum up what I wanted. I couldn’t put a finger on a word or phrase that would sum up what I wanted. Same with my feelings of a life lacking purpose. I knew when I read brian kim’s self-improvement articles and ebooks that I wanted to live a life that I would be passionate about. Through brian kim’s articles and books, I was able to come to the conclusion that I wanted to do something with animals, wildlife, nature, outdoors. These answers were pieces to the puzzle of the ultimate answer to the question of what I wanted to do in my life. The reason I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what I wanted was because the questions were asking me what had excited me or I had loved to do in the past. I had lived in a household with parents- who I do love and appreciate- who taught me that working hard academically was significantly important and to put off play and fun for after you get a good job. I had never done anything extraordinary. At the time, I had never been camping, hiking to my liking only a few times, and spent my weekends watching t.v. and playing some basketball. I didn’t even hang out with friends to just talk before if I wasn’t holding a basketball. Point being, if I wasn’t playing basketball with a friend, I wasn’t socializing.

Life felt boring. It was work, work, work, and boring weekends without much excitement. I hated living such a mundane life. My soul was crying out for more. My emotions told me something was missing in my life. I thought to myself so many times when I was alone, “there’s got to be more to life than this (meaningless work and boring weekends). So to continue, I searched long and hard. I read how to find what you love to do article by brian kim and bought his book how to find what you love to do and get paid for doing it. I knew I could not live a life where it was all work and no excitement. The more you think about these questions and write down your thoughts, the more clear your answers to the question becomes. I wanted a career that would give me the things I was missing in my life at the time: more people and a career that was interesting for me. By this time it was almost before we had to turn in out applications for colleges and decided majors. There was about a couple months of time. I wanted to do psychology. I felt like being a psychologist, talking to patients and helping them with their problems, after going through the feelings I was going through, I wanted to help others go through these tough times. I was pretty convinced that I wanted to be a psychologist for quite a few weeks. Then a few weeks later, my mom told me about nursing field. She told me how our cousin wanted to get into nursing. At first I thought it was an utter joke. Why would I want to take care of sick people? Being a psychologist I felt like I could help people who were hurting or suffering emotionally, so I could relate to that. But sick people? My mom proceeded to tell me that nursing allows you to work three days a week 12 hour shift, and you make a good amount of money. This got me intrigued. I could have 4 days off to go do what I want whereas most other jobs are 5 days a week and only 2 days off? I researched the benefits of a nursing career. Turns out the nursing career has many benefits such as good pay, and the 3 days 12 hour shifts, flexibility (although I somewhat doubt this in our current economy), and high in demand for years to come. What really got me intrigued into nursing was the travel nursing career. The idea that you can travel to almost anywhere in the US and with some agencies all around the world, with good pay, good benefits, and time off seemed to be too great to pass up- and as I still don’t know for certain because I have begun my nursing career yet. With this career, I felt like it would give my life meaning. I would be travelling, helping people, making good money, have time off to pursue my interests and hobbies that I wasn’t able to pursue as a kid, I wanted to become a travel nurse. That’s where I am now, working and studying in nursing school.