weighing my options
In the last two weeks I feel like I’ve had to make the most grown-up decision I’ve made so far in my semi-adult life… over and over and over again. It felt like a break up… only it happened 5 times over the course of two weeks.
I’ve been lucky enough (and worked hard enough to be subsequently lucky enough) to have been offered two amazing job opportunities. [I also have to thank that guy that wrote that article, that pissed me off, that exposed my Asian flaws, that forced me to speak my mind during every meeting, for fear that my peers and supervisors would look at my work ethic as a culmination of habits formed from a childhood of “meritocracy”)] For those of you that know me, that know that there is no “quiet opening” to anything I’m excited about, you probably wonder why I’m not more openly ecstatic about the decision I’ve made. In all honesty, I’ve made such a bittersweet decision that I can’t help but feel like I’m still weighing my options… still daydreaming a little bit about that cooooool, fun, “risky” offer. In my semi-adult life I’ve been faced with having to choose between something safe, something managerial, something with large immediate financial incentives and something that is described as place where people are “discovering their dreams.”
I have weighed and parsed through every scenario, every explanation, every single possibilty. I stayed up on countless nights rolling in bed, day dreaming, nightmaring, and worrying only to anxiously watch the sun rise and realize that I still hadn’t made a decision. I thought about fate. Would I discover my dreams there? Is this my dream? What is my dream? I thought about how the founder was from my hometown and went to my highschool. I thought about how this offer was fatefully supposed to lead to that counter offer. I have tried to wrap my exploding head around this overwhelming decision that my dad says, in the grand scheme of things, will not determine everything I do but just something I do. Thanks dad but your kind words are not consoling. I wish the God of the universe would just close one door, shove me into the other, and let me be blissfully, stupidly, just be… so blindly happy… but that’s not the way the world works. We make decisions. We have regrets. We live to change things. We stay hungry. We have to stay hungry.
I know that no matter what decision I decided to make, I’d feel this way. I would still look back. I’d still hope that the other door would stay open, sway in the wind, and coax me in on a terrible day. I’m genuinely thankful for the opportunities, very excited about what’s to come, but I’m still taking on tomorrow with a little bit of yesterday. I wish I knew the future. I wish the unknown didn’t scare me. I wish someone could tell me that I made the right or wrong decision. But more than that, I wish I could just believe them. It’s hard growing up. But thank God we’re growing.
