I Think I Like Not Knowing

I’m a planner. A full-on, always-trying-to-have-my-sh*t-together type of person who prefers organization, order, and answers rather than existing in total chaos. Life has always seemed easier that way, easier when I have a bunch going on, when I know where I’m going, and when I have a sense of what’s to come and where I will go.

When I graduated college, I had my first real jolt of reality. In some sense, I knew what I was doing, but not where I would go, who I would become. I had a thousand questions in my mind, and as I stared at myself in the mirror, I couldn’t answer a single one of them.

It was absolutely terrifying.

I remember writing about this a lot, trying to make sense of things I couldn’t understand. Trying to figure out what direction I was supposed to be headed when I wasn’t really sure. I felt like my peers understood the struggle. It was as if we had suddenly cut our umbilical cords and needed to learn to breathe on our own. It was as if all the prep and classes and tests we had taken only led us to divided paths with no answers. And especially with a struggling job market, we were all standing like idiots, looking clueless.

I remember stressing about what I didn’t know, what I had no way of knowing.

And then, I just started to inch my way forward. Baby step by baby step. Half faking it, half hoping I would somehow find my way. And I did.

Now I’m in the same situation again, an open road with no set direction, no guaranteed path, no predetermined answers. I’m staring into my future and I have no freaking idea how it will go.

But for the first time in my life, I think I like not knowing.

I think I like the excitement of going after something new, of chasing my dreams, of being a mix of responsible and reckless, just running forward and not stopping to think too much about what will happen if it doesn’t work out.

I think I like not having all the answers, not knowing, for certain, that what I’m doing is smart, but believing in it anyways.

I think I like the buzz, the hum, the electricity I feel in my toes and my fingers and my heart as I start to picture myself on this new road, in this new life.

It’s terrifying, but terrifying in a way that I’ve chosen to embrace.

I don’t have all the answers, and this is okay. Sometimes the best parts of life are the ones you don’t plan.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m not planning. I’m shedding my old skin, the skin that plans, that overthinks, that stresses about things that haven’t even happened yet and I’m embracing the I-don’t-knows.

I’m letting go.

And I’m trusting that wherever I’ll go, is exactly where I’m meant to be.