Clarity is a stranger I have never met. I’ve always wondered about highly successful or famous people, not the secrets to their success, really, or how to make it big. My question has mostly lied in knowing, how did they know this is something they want to do for the rest of their lives? How did they choose a path and think, "I want to remain on this path," whether it yields great results or not? This is it, and putting in all the required effort.

Now I know the popular saying that the only decisions we regret are the ones we never make; however, I cannot figure out who I want to be. I mean, it doesn't help that I have one hobby that is both a job and an activity I do in my downtime, which I admittedly enjoy. The intricacy of the matter confuses me because I have read those books, the ones that guarantee that by the end I'll definitely know the path I should be on. The ones where the process of elimination is used to make a choice.

I like this, not that, making life a mathematical problem where career choices are made using a venn diagram with choices made based on offered stability, possible growth, and the off chance that this could be the big idea. As if all emotions could be silenced and the result of this effort would be equal to satisfaction. If only life were that easy.

Freedom is somewhat of a commodity these days; understand this and that, or be so valuable that people have to listen to me. Do it long enough, and I'll have the leeway to choose the things I actually like, on the down low. And all this marketing and mindset rewiring is crazy to me because I don't want to be in people’s faces. I don't want to advise the next person to eliminate all the other things they may like, as only number five has the chance for success in this world.

Many truths in life are hard-fought, but the simplest is knowing myself. Now the voices in my head can be shunned and the careful decisions made, but the deep feeling of dissatisfaction lingers, more food for thought, more empty days, and darker nights. I do not offer the solution to this dilemma; I am simply pointing out that the solution cannot be elimination based on logic.

I am sadly not one who lives above this rule because, although I subscribe to a different philosophy, I am a coward who chooses the path of logic most of the time. I look at my choices and wonder if I am brave enough to choose to live a life without much direction, and so I choose a path, any path. It might not be right; other times I feel it in my bones as deeply wrong, but what else would I do? I know the wrong path, but I have only ever dreamed about the right one. I have never walked it.

In a world that deceptively offers the freedom to be anything, I want to be everything, but I settle for being nothing because it is a safe choice. And for all of the speeches on comfort zones and daring to face my fears, it never feels as good as I'd like to imagine.

Changing a path never feels like a beautiful monologue, like a lane switch done by an experienced driver. It feels like shaky hands and sweaty brows, like travelling on a cramped bus to a palace you’ve never been to before. One where you don't know what the rules are. It feels like a twisted stomach and breaths that don’t come as easily as you’d like them to. So I continue my journey, and some days I feel brave enough to take a stance in a different direction, but where to turn eludes me. They say clarity begins while in motion, but no one offered me a map. Stuck on a path that diverges into different lanes, which one do I choose?

It's no surprise I pause and stare at the lights as everyone passes, living what I assume is their own version of a choice while I choose to be stuck, because, as the experts say, everything is a choice.

As an average young person, it feels a bit performative to say I miss when I was younger, but I really do. I miss when my schedule was cartoons and I believed I had the best voice I had ever heard—even with my apparent lack of practice. I missed when I would see something on TV and think I could be an actor if I even tried. Messing with electronics and tearing the DVD player apart to quickly reassemble it and thinking to myself with a smile, I must be an amazing engineer.

Cutting up pieces of paper and then using my faded watercolour paint and cheap brushes to stroke on it with the most uneven lines known to man and thinking, of course, I can be a painter—I have so much potential. I miss when I felt like I could be anything I wanted, when I felt like I could be everything. Not a confused writer stuck in a box, wondering about the complexities of making aesthetic videos online to see if it would get my writing out. Obsessing over if a change would be the redirection I need to be me.

The first time I drew a scientifically accurate human heart, I was convinced I would be a doctor. I thought to myself, I may be terrible at drawing this, but the point is I can label it perfectly. I could become a person who knows why things happen to people and how to fix them. I am no Picasso; I cannot handle the possibility of someone dying under my care—I am not detached enough for that.

I am no engineer; math is one of the things that scares me because hours and hours of learning don’t seem to help me enough to make me better at it. Equations defy logic, at least in my mind. I am no artist unless you consider bleeding on paper an art form, but it doesn’t seem amazing enough to be noticeable.

Choosing one path has a flip side not often considered. When the lanes have been picked, it is often a tempestuous journey to arrive at a destination because it feels remiss not to continue on that path even if all it offers is misery. Tenacity is a trait applauded, and endurance is a skill everyone should learn, but the notice isn’t given.

Stay on this path until it no longer serves you. I would be wary of giving that advice because seemingly everything is built on endurance. At least 10,000 hours spent on an activity to become an expert. I have no idea if I have spent 10,000 hours on anything. Maybe that's why I am a jack of no trades and, ironically, a master of none.

The freedom of growing older seems to be a prison in disguise; many things are put off as childish. Daydreaming is a reckless venture, and profitless pursuits are an attempt at ruin. Everything has to have a purpose, and so those who have none feel lost; those who wonder what it is spend most of their lives trying to figure out what it is.

I feel like a cocktail of all these things; I choose logic; I want to be free. I choose a path; I want so many. I want to be an expert; I am afraid of still being subpar after the 10,000th hour hits. I am afraid; I am sometimes brave. I want to know what path to choose; I like the space that not knowing brings.

Is this all fear, or is this a typical human response? I think it is.