A Volunteer's Perspective - Time is running out

Growing up there is always this one question you get asked frequently: What do you want to do when you are an adult? What do you want to study? Where do you see yourself in ten years? Even in our friendship books there always was that one blank you had to fill out: “When I grow up, I want to be a/an ... “. The only problem little six year old Marie had, when she was supposed to fill out that blank, was, that she didn’t know and to this day continues on to not know the answer to that question.

On that note, graduating high school didn´t come to my favour, because the second graduation is in sight, people start to love questions that concern your future. Parents, teachers, relatives and even strangers suddenly seem to think about nothing else other than your future plans. And I can´t and also don´t want to blame them for this, because believe me when I say I haven´t stopped thinking about it either.

Architecture,law, journalism, pedagogy, chemistry, German language and literature studies – to name some of the subjects I thought about studying. Since I was like sixteen years old I always felt the pressure to be certain of my future plans. This pressure is still on my mind, crawling around in my brain, waiting for an opportunity to pop up in my thoughts again and mock me about my uncertainty, my inability to just have that one answer.

Until now the one thing, which always calmed me down was, that I still have time. Time to think about my plans, about my wants and needs, about the right choices, but that time I cherish so dearly is slowly but steadily running out. This is one of the reasons I made the decision to do voluntary work for one year. I basically bought myself time. I have this one year left, before the last grain of sand hits the pile on the bottom of my personal future-hourglass. Am I going to watch it fall with silent fear or pleasant anticipation?

Guess what...As of today I don’t know the answer to that question, I obviously hope for the latter to come true. This whole blog is not supposed to be an overdramatic storytime, because my struggle really isn´t that dramatic at all. Most of the time I don´t stress too much over my future, still the question concerning my studies is waiting to be answered and for now I can´t do that. I know that I will find my way, but it´s killing me to not be sure of my future plans right now. Time will get to me at some point and I will have figured something out, I am sure of that! And the words of John Green show that time flies anyway and we can´t change it, even if we wanted to, so thinking too much about the future will only make you crazy in some way or another. 

To end this blog post on a positive note, here´s a song that fit´s the topic well and helps to calm me down, when I start overthinking again: Don’t Matter Now- George Ezra