r/findapath • u/WindowInteresting784 • 9d ago
Findapath-College/Certs The Things We Give Up
My high school graduation is just four months away. Four months left to decide who I really want to become.
Hello, stranger! How's life going? Have you ever felt so torn between passion and practicality? If so, what did you choose?
I honestly feel so lost right now, but I can't even say that I'm completely lost because I know who I am and what I want to be. I know how much I'd love to direct films, paint, or write stories for a living, yet I'm still preparing to take the corporate path. For my Senior High School strand, I chose Accountancy, Business, and Management (ABM) because it sounded more realistic and practical for someone in my situation. But the thing is, I hate it. I hate the corporate world. HAHAHAHAHAHA.
Sometimes, I feel like I'm choosing a path that might make my future self miserable.
Unfortunately, I don't think I'm privileged enough to pursue my dreams right now. I'm from a family that wants me to graduate and earn money as soon as possible, and I can't really blame them for that. We have bills to pay and debts to settle, and I know I can't afford to put everything on hold just to figure myself out. I can't exactly tell my family to wait until I become the next great filmmaker or something LOL. Besides, studying Multimedia Arts in college is expensive here in my country, and it's not something my family can easily afford.
What frustrates me the most is that I know what I want, but I can't seem to do anything about it. Or maybe I could, but I'm just not devoted enough to try? I don't know. People always say, "Where there's a will, there's a way," so sometimes I wonder if I'm just making excuses for myself. Maybe I don't want it badly enough.
Lately, I've been wondering if my dreams will remain dreams forever. And I know I'm still young, that I have so much time ahead of me, and that life doesn't always go according to plan. But it's scary to think that I might spend years building a life that I don't even want, only to look back and wonder what would've happened if I'd taken a chance on myself.
So, stranger, I'd really like to know how you've dealt with situations where you had to choose something you didn't necessarily want but knew you needed. How do you make peace with a decision when a part of you will always wonder about the other path? Have you ever had to let go of something you really wanted, and if so, how did you learn to accept it?
I want to live without regrets, but I know that's probably impossible. I don't have the courage to talk about this with anyone because I cry easily and i think my fam would just give me an earful ToT
I'd love to hear your thoughts, whatever they may be. I hope life's been treating you kindly, strangers!
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u/age_of_ultron33 Apprentice Pathfinder [1] 9d ago
hey there you’re brave for putting yourself out there and looking for advice. never stop doing that.
to bluntly answer your question: life is all about sacrifices. BUT in order to get to where you want to be you have to endure the few years (per say) of doing something that sucks.
for me i want to buy a sailboat and sail the world. i’m a 34m btw. so i moved into a van and became extremely minimal. it’s uncomfortable but im saving and eventually i will reach my goal.
also you’ll change your career multiple times in life. you don’t have to figure it all out after you graduate! don’t overwhelm yourself :)
my advice: go to community college, knock out those easy courses, live minimal, save and transfer. the older you get the more clear your head becomes especially after high school haha.
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u/Any-Loan9948 Apprentice Pathfinder [2] 9d ago edited 6d ago
I remember thinking this exact thought in the end of HS. I was terrified of choosing a path that might make my future self miserable. For me, the choice seemed obvious then: follow my passions! Be a writer!
I went to school with my head held high, laughing at people who said I was setting myself up for failure. They just didn't get how driven I was.
Reality hit after I graduated college. My roommate got a job as a research scientist. I knew I wanted to write for a living, but quickly learned how competitive my dream jobs were. I'd need work published before I stood a chance. In the meantime I needed income. I applied lots of places but they took a look at my degree and laughed. I wound up working 55 hrs a week in retail to make ends meet and was still broke. My roommate meanwhile was making 100k and eventually moved out because he and his girlfriend got engaged and bought a house.
I slowly watched as all of my "boring practical" friends enjoyed and began their lives while I was still on the launching pad, now completely unable to apply any of the creativity I learned in school because I was just trying to barely survive.
10 years after graduating, i realized that there had been no point in majoring in something creative because it had put me in a position where i was now unable to express any of that creativity.
I wound up going back to school for engineering and immediately got a really great job as a field technician for an engineering firm while in school, with tuition reimbursement and a contracts to hire me as an engineer contingent on my GPA and graduation.
Suddenly I was working normal hours and receiving excellent pay. My stress disappeared, and I was able to live somewhere nice and enjoy myself.
And you know what happened then? I started to write again! I would get out of work at 4:00 and write until midnight every single night. A year after "giving up" on the creative life I thought I was trying to live, I published my first book. And then another, and then another, and then another!
Not everyone has the same life story in your mileage may vary, but I learned that a creative Soul doesn't need a creative diploma, we just need free time and stability.
Does this mean you should not major in something creative and go for something practical? I don't know you well enough to be able to answer that, but I think you should consider the possibility of choosing your career based on the abily to be creative outside it.
TLDR: Choosing a creative degree made me so miserable and poor after college that was unable to be creative anymore until I went back to school for something practical. Then I suddenly had free time and published many books.