Hey there! Welcome back, and see you soon. It’s about to be the midsemester break, after all.
It’s my week to do the editorial. I’ve procrastinated writing this until the night it was due, too stubborn to let Gryffin take over doing it instead. I scrolled through a lot of writing prompts before I found something that I felt like I could talk about: what is a question you are really scared to know the answer to?
Between being in my final year of uni, beginning Co-Editorship and applying for every graduate role/law clerkship under the sun, there’s a lot of pressure right now to make decisions that will have tangible impacts on my future. But as I move into post-uni life, I guess my question is what those decisions will mean, and if they were correct to make at all. Instinctually, I know they matter – it feels like watching the butterfly in Life Is Strange after deciding to intervene when David is harassing Kate (sorry if that spoiled anything). This action will have consequences. But does it all actually work out?
I feel slightly sick to realise that this is my last semester one midsemester break. Truthfully, it feels like it’s going way too fast. It was only the last issue of the magazine that Gryffin and I felt like we actually made something that was unique to our Co-Editorship, and not just best-guessing what we thought our past Editor Nina would do. Again, there’s that feeling of pressure. Did I do enough this week to ensure that the Editors that come after Gryffin and I will think “what would Hanna and Gryffin do?”, or will I just be a place from which the person after me wishes to improve upon? Does it matter if we tried our best?
I think similarly about my law degree. Maybe I should’ve connected, connected, connected more on LinkedIn, or done Honours. Again, I wonder if I had done these things, if it would change the trajectory of my life. Sometimes I’m terrified to know if it will, because I can’t really go back and change it now. Potentially that is what is at the root of it all – that feeling of not being in control. We fear what we do not understand, or whatever.
In the spirit of not making this editorial super fucking emo, I think there is a way to feel more comfortable with the uncertainty of how it will all turn out. Like I sometimes say to Gryffin, the answer to whether something matters or was correct is often not a simple yes or no, but a “secret third option”. Reflecting now, I think my whole life has probably been a secret third option. You can make unconventional choices that are a bit off the beaten path, and I’ve found it’s actually okay to not make decisions that are definitely correct or completely rational. It is sappy, but you are allowed to make mistakes, and not necessarily be on the same path as your peers.
Maybe the answer to whether it will all work out isn’t something to be scared of, but rather something to be curious about. I genuinely do wonder if my decisions that I classify as “fuck ups” or “wrong” will lead me to that secret third option, and be unique to my own path that leads me right where I am meant to be. I think that’s a far better thing to think about than feeling terrified every time you think of the future.
Maybe curiosity killed the cat, but it certainly hasn’t killed me. And it probably wouldn’t hurt you either.
