If youâre like me, youâre in your mid to late-twenties, have a reasonably good job, not worried about bills, being paid a huge sum of money to fund your brunch-eating, rave-going, newest-generation-tech-gadget-buying habits⊠and feeling empty in the vastness.
Sure, weâre not hungry. Everything about the way we were raised made it impossible for us to be hungry. Physically that is.
But sometimes we sit down and feel a dull and never-ending pang â a hunger we canât quite place a finger on. For our identity? For meaning? For something more than just to be fed?
How did we get here? Letâs take a look back.
In elementary school, you were one of many second-gen kids, eating âstinkyâ food (dumplings?) from a thermos in the classroom. Quiet, ugly, unpopular, gifted. When they asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, you drew a yellow happy face â I want to be happy.
You loved the library back then. There was nothing else to love. No sports, no video games, no pets. (Those were silly things, a waste of time, said your parents.) So you read everything in the kids section at the library. Every book in the teen section. The fantasy books that were thousands of pages long. Then one day you graduated to the adult section, which seemed really scary, especially when you accidentally made the wrong turn and ended up at the romance novel section.
You begged your parents to buy you a digital tablet and drew pictures every day. You wrote terrible novels every November for NaNoWriMo. You still had dreams back then â artist, writer.
In high school, you werenât really the best in your class anymore, but you were still acceptably smart, right? You took all the APs and Honors classes. Your parents berated you when you brought home any grades below and A â and sometimes even when you brought home an A, the comment was, âWhy not an A+?â
But now there werenât any dreams. All you wanted to escape, be free. And so you took the easy way out in the college essays and said Pre-Med.
But of course that would never work. You didnât have the drive or the motivation to go through 8-12 years of more of feeling inadequate, small, and uninspired. And so following your parents urges, you finish a degree in Computer Science.
Itâs January 2020. You just quit your 3rd job, but you still had hope for your career. Youâve been growing so much and making big strides. Youâre making more money and you can finally buy the things you want to enjoy your life. You were counting every cent when you just graduated, and now look at you, looking to buy a home, looking to get a pet, paying for therapy out of pocket!
Then a month later, you find your dream job. You double your total compensation and you finally feel like you achieved something in your life. You feel validated, like it was all worth it for this moment.
With your partner, you get a dog. You move to a bigger apartment. You buy a car. You buy a home! You buy a big girl couch. You buy another car. You look to buy 2nd home.
This is your dream life⊠isnât it?
And then you remember your job is to make people stay on a webpage and make sure theyâre looking at advertisements. The investors are looking for growth. Always more growth. Hungry. Your peers are looking for the next big thing to jump on. This startup is taking off this year. I really think itâs gonna be big! Always more hunger.
So where do we go from here? Iâm not sure. But youâre welcome to stay tuned on my musings, rants, and doodles here.
In other news, the US will be experiencing its Pluto Return so buckle up for some financial ruin and destruction soon!!!