Still haven't found what I'm looking for

I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

And I’m not trying to reference the U2 song here. Okay, maybe a little.

At the age of 18, fresh out of education, I went to work in the hospitality industry. Starting out as a waiter, then supervisor and now assistant manager, I’ve made decent progression for sure. I’ve been doing this since scratch, my first job that I never left - I’m part of the furniture - and over half a decade later: I’m still here. Same place, down the road, where I know everything and everyone like the back of the hand. I’m still here.

This was not the plan.

The little waiting gig down the road was a never-ending full-time rota of 55hrs+ a week and has certainly sucked my soul drier than a 9-5 would have. I got caught in it and was left with no time for what I actually wanted to do. I wanted to write; it was my childhood dream. To be published, to be read and heard. Fiction and poetry my main enjoyment, a hobby I originally picked up from a joy of reading. Now, I’m not so sure of anything. Is what I’m looking for from life an endless infinity of turning tables, understaffing, and never seeing friends or family for the sake of a decent pay? It’s unquestionable: I’m good at it, I’m valued by both company, staff, and customers. Is what I’m looking for to write the untold stories in my mind that never come out the way I want and struggle through publication? It’s questionable, how good I am at it and if my words will ever hold the value, I’d hope them too.

My hopes for the future are on a constant swinging pendulum, flicking between optimistic for my career in hospitality or as a writer. Both are very different; both cause me to lose sleep at night. As of recent, I’ve begun to worry about what I’d do if this pendulum stopped, dead in the middle with no answer.

Yet I try to balance this. Sure, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for in life; but I don’t have too.

Recently, I had an epiphany, where I’ve fallen into the same trap of “need to know all and have all by 30”, which, really, it’s ridiculous. There is all this time ahead of us to just figure it out. To take the time to truly see what we want and to go for it. Why, do we always feel like we have to condense and rush everything, including our own progression and development?

It can be said that whatever I decide, what needs to be admitted right now is that I am evidently unhappy. I do not like my work; I am uncertain in my writing. Both manage to keep my up a night and not in good ways. There is the weight of the world on my shoulders, and it was me who put it there. I intend to take the world off my shoulders, to let it sit in front of me and allow myself to figure out what’s next.

I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, but I am going in search. As the old saying goes, its not all about the destination, but the journey itself. There is a way to go to making myself content with my life and career. What I will do, is stop being so hard on myself for it.

You have your whole life to find what you are looking for from it, and as much as the unknowing may make us discontent or uneasy, all those feelings are part of the progress to getting there.