I never had a plan. Or to be more accurate, I never followed a plan. I took pride on being spontaneous, just following my feelings as they go. I remember you asking me in a taxi, 'Have you ever thought of what you would be doing in the next five to ten years? Have you ever planned that far ahead?' I still didn't think there was a need for plans at that time. 'There is no tomorrow. Why plan?' was what I believed. But I've come to really realize that without a plan, you go nowhere. As a friend put it, 'it's like walking without a road and finding out that you've been walking in circles all along.' That's why I have not a single achievement I am proud of gaining in the past 29 years.
For the first time, I am enjoying the feeling of having a goal, working out a plan towards it and looking forward to reaching it. But I am stuck. I understand that goals are meant to be hard to reach, but the problem is, am I moving towards the right goal? Is it worth my effort? What if I have the wrong target? You never find out the answers and the only thing you can do is try it out and see for yourself. So how do you keep up the energy, the motivation, the faith when you don't believe?
The problem with me is I keep wavering. I can never get my mind/heart settled on one thing. I can't focus, even in literal meaning. It's like my mind. I let it wander around uncontrolled and let it bring me wherever it goes. I thought that means I'm thinking, but I guess I was wrong. Very wrong. It only means that I was not thinking.
"Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one's consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality—or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make." - Ayn Rand
In Ayn Rand's words, I was letting myself "drift in a semiconscious daze", merely reacting to what was happening around me in the past 29 years. How sad and pathetic that is. It is like I haven't yet evolved into a present-day human being.
There are a lot of things I'd like to do and try out. Sometimes, especially in front of people, I feel like I can do anything and that I'll be good at anything I do if I tried. At least I paint pictures of myself that way in my wild imaginations. I guess that's why I haven't even tried anything much. I'm too afraid of finding out I suck, because deep inside, I have no confidence in myself. I am so afraid of failure...what I already am.
I wish I could see the reality in all things. I wish I would know exactly where I stand, what to say, how to act. I never really see what's happening in the moment underneath all the talking and action...in a meeting, at a dinner, during a conversation. When I come to realize it, it would already be when everything is over...much too late. Why is this? Am I too absorbed with myself, my own feelings and thoughts, that I cannot see the outside world clearly? How do I not get so absorbed with myself?
I have never been a good communicator. I feel awkward all the time when connecting with people. I never know what to say. I have a hard time expressing anything. I never have the right vocabulary. I don't have much vocabulary in store anyway. I have trouble memorizing anything. Or maybe more accurately, I am too lazy to remember the details.
These things are always on my mind. They keep floating and sinking in there but it seems I have never done anything to remove them, make things better, improve my many weaknesses. I spend days, months, years, decades thinking about the same things and I do practically nothing about it. Explains why I have no achievement in the past 29 years.
