New Years, new decades, new beginnings.

This time of year just forces reflections out of people and future plannings. We humans love beginnings and using them as an excuse to improve or change ourselves. But the problem I’ve been having is summed up like this: What good is the future when each day is a struggle?

Who do I want to be in five years? I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m going to get through the pile of things at my feet now.

What do I want to do with my life? I don’t know, but I know what I don’t want and I guess that’s half the battle?

The future is subjective, it’s improbability and probability all at once. Anything could happen, but not everything will. It’s scary, it’s hard, it’s damn near impossible. I panic at night and in my quiet time about it. I don’t know where I’m heading, I don’t know who I’ll be tomorrow, I barely know who I am now.

It’s all so easily overwhelming and hard to take in. It’s hard to go to performance reviews and talk about plans. It’s hard to sit on social media, on stream or with friends and talk about goals or ambitions. I don’t actually know. I have ideas that are nebulous and impossible to grasp firmly. Like Jean Val Jean says, ‘Who Am I?’

But

Things are not as they appear. As the manga Mixed Vegetables taught me, when you don’t know what you want, that means you can be anything. That’s a version of freedom. I’m not locked into a path, so I can go anywhere. I can try anything and spend the entire future finding my happiness, finding myself. Maybe I’ll never get there, but I can make the journey to be whatever I want, and share all emotions on the spectrum getting to wherever I land. I don’t know the future, I don’t know what I want, so I can live each day and fill it how I please, until I’ve had my fill.

I think in the end that’s all I want. I want to get lost on all the paths until one gives me a name or a purpose I’m looking for. I want experiences and stories. I want everything and nothing. This is the freedom I choose for myself. The adventure I want. I want my answers to always change until I’ve lived in all ways that I can. I won’t plan for a future I can’t see, but live the day before me, right here, right now.

Dear reader if we meet, and meet again, I hope we can always relearn each other and have a new version of ourselves.

In this new day, and this new year, who are you?