An explanation of how I ended up here.

May 2022. I am a fresh high school graduate. I just graduated from the school I had attended for only the last 5 months. In the state I had only known for the last 6 months. An anxious 17-year-old is thrown into adult life faster than I could ever begin to fathom.

Life has always felt like a battle against change for me. But one thing was a constant for me—the plan. You know, get good grades, attend college, then get a good job. The American dream is fed to every one of us. So, of course, I took the next step and enrolled in university. But it wasn’t as easy as that. When you come from a low-income family like mine, especially a single-parent one, there’s a lot to consider when it comes to college. Housing, books, materials, tuition, and fees — everything is coming out of your pocket. That’s a huge responsibility to take on at freshly 18.

My dream was to live the classic college life. Attend university in some far-off place with a dorm and a strange roommate. But quickly I realized that was a fallacy for people like me. You see, even if I could afford it, I realized I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. Being highly anxious, on the autism spectrum, and ADHD, those kinds of things aren’t always possible for me to participate in. That was my first taste of “failure”. I felt that because I wasn’t cut out for that life, I was settling by staying home and attending school nearby. That mindset created the self-destruction spiral that I’m cleaning up now at 22.

Always criticizing yourself and living to do things because you’re supposed to only leads to feeling unfulfilled. Quickly, I stopped putting effort into attending classes and completing my assignments. By January, I hadn’t attended a single class in a MONTH. So of course I failed out that semester.

I had been working for a certain coffee shop at the time, which offered “free college.” I took my company up on the offer and began pathways to admission for the university that they partnered with. I did this for 2 semesters. I had done pretty well; generally speaking, I passed all my classes with a C or above. Doing school remotely had felt good. I love to learn new things, and doing well made me feel so confident. However, I hated my job.

The way this company worked is that in order to complete your degree and have it paid for, you must stay at the company. That, of course, made sense to me. But the misery I was in at my job didn’t feel worth the price of the degree. I quit Starbucks and then was thrown into another reality. I couldn’t afford to transfer the credits earned in the Earned Admission program into traditional classes. I felt crushed. Embarrassed. Broke.

From there, I chose to work in childcare. I love children and teaching, but the job would overwhelm me. When it comes to my personal life, I just kind of… dissociated. I think many people would be able to relate to this feeling. This feeling of auto-pilot, completely numb, just going through the motions. I feel it to this day.

So with that very condensed summary of the last 4 or so years brings us here. Present day. I’m a budtender. I plan on re-enrolling in school soon. I’ve wrestled with studying psychology or marketing. I struggle with making a solid decision on anything. Perhaps that’s the entire point of your 20s. So I’m saying fuck it. I’m pursuing an education because I find it valuable to gain a higher education. I’m working in the cannabis industry because I enjoy it and it’s fun. I’m starting this blog because I love to create.

The moral of the story is that the longer you live for others and their expectations of you, the harder it becomes for you to see what you really want for yourself. The plan is bullshit. What I find truly aspirational is to be able to truly know yourself. And to live for that.