Coffee Conversations: Can’t Get Lost Without a Destination

Coffee Conversations is a segment that talks about things usually overheard in quieter moments; like when talking to a friend in a coffee shop.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

You know, every time I go to my therapist, I pick up a tea from the complimentary offerings at the front. There’s never any milk to go with it so I just have to endure the bitterness throughout the hour, and it’s somehow worse when it gets colder. It reminds me of when I was in Turkey, with straight black tea for breakfast every day. It came in tiny glasses, so it felt more like an espresso shot. I’d still prefer it with milk, thanks. 

I suppose you could construct a metaphor there, about bringing bitterness into a therapy session and having it slowly drained away. It could feel like you’re emptying your cup of turmoil, only to come back next time with a fresh concoction. At the moment, I’ve been mostly talking to them about job satisfaction. It’s something I’ve been unhappy with for a long time as my experience of working at this company has been very unflattering. It’s the kind of job that’s plagued by poor management which bleeds into every corner of the operation. It's not the sort of climate that I want to be in much longer. 

We had a class today where we asked the students whether it was better to wait for your dream career, or to settle for what job you can get. One student, usually quiet, asked me during a lull in conversation if this (a tutor at a tutoring center) was my dream job. After a moment, I said, "no, not at all" and laughed. I said I wanted to be a travel writer, ideally, but it's hard to get people to read what they can so easily watch instead. Who wants to read a blog post about Crete when they can watch endless reels of comments and vistas from the same place?

I wanted to dial back the negativity for them, so I added that this job was only a stopgap. It had allowed me to do lots of fun things, but it was never going to be the end of the road. They had lost interest by that point and other students started complaining about someone humming too loudly, but it's always interesting to see how I'm kinder about myself with other people than I am to myself. So, that pretty clearly indicates that I'm not in the place I want to be.

Aside from that, I also feel unchallenged. This isn’t the career I want for the rest of my life; it was never really the career I wanted at all. So, the conversation I’m having with my therapist is: what do you actually want to do? What’s your direction?  

I thought I knew. I wanted to be a writer, I supposed, to make my voice immortal in lieu of my body. I thought it such a grand scheme. Stories can last forever, after all. Yet I’m 30 now (the horror!) and so far, nothing much has come of it. My writing feels like an indulgence or a well-practiced hobby more so than a practicable career. Perhaps it is undiagnosed ADHD that’s thwarted my attention span and prevented finishing anything longer than a blog post. Perhaps I’ve simply been too busy to devote time to it. Or, most worryingly of all, I’m actually not destined to be a writer at all. That thought alone has led me to wander to new possibilities: journalist, photographer, presenter etc. - all seem to preserve some amount of extroversion or busyness. But how do you choose between so many paths? 

Maybe it’s your own fault, and you just don’t get it yet. Or maybe you’re just paralysed by choice. For me personally, I feel like if I lie down any longer than I won’t want to get back up. Something needs to change, I think. But then I’ve known that for a while. It also doesn’t help when you look around you and see friends excel, and increasingly younger people achieving crazy success so quickly.  

More and more, I'm looking into the future and seeing a cliff approaching me next year. Four years in Hong Kong, four years of a short-term job. Four years where I could have done so many other things, had I planned ahead at all. How I view my use of time can change on the daily, but that doesn't help me when I'm considering the future. But the idea of another year going by without change...it feels wrong.

So, I’m in this weird headspace where I can see myself achieving so much and am frustrated by a lack of progress, especially when I already know the steps I should be taking. Instead, I console myself by writing out extended rants in an op-ed for a website that few people consciously visit.  

You can distract me if you like though, since you’re here. How have you been?