Throughout my life – or at least my young adult life – I’ve been incredibly passive. I only realized this recently.

I’ve been going through the motions without actually understanding what or why I’ve done the things I’ve done. I’ve made a lot of decisions without really thinking them through or pondering their implications on my career aspirations or general life goals. I’ve failed to really hone in on what my life goals even are.

During my senior year of high school, I was passive about choosing a college to attend. I waited until damn near the deadline to choose one of my top 2 options, and that’s a choice I made mostly off of pressure from my parents. I didn’t visit any college campuses. Didn’t attend the summer orientation that the college offered. I just floated into college with no real drive or determination of my own. And while I don’t regret attending the college that I did, it still bothers me that I didn’t really do my due diligence when it came to making a decision that important.

I was also passive about my major as well. I started off as a science major. I barely did research on undergraduate programs before college; i just picked the major that my parents/sister suggested. I eventually switched to business at the end of my freshman year, but again, it wasn’t a carefully thought out decision that involved research or anything. I didn’t really have any real aspirations within business; I picked business mostly because a lot of my friends were switching from science to business as well. Once again, I was making major decisions, which would impact my college career and the initial trajectory of my professional career, without any serious engagement or thought.

I tried to change that during my junior and senior years by being active about exploring different career tracks outside of business. I took a Business Law class and was surprisingly intrigued, and decided I was interested in being a lawyer. (That dream died rather quickly after a conversation with a pre-law advisor…and after seeing how much reading was required.) After my sister’s psychiatry rotation in med school, I wondered if maybe psychology would be a good field to pursue. (The barriers to entry were steep given my non-science background and I realized that I didn’t care for the field as much as my sister did.) After graduation, I tried to pursue journalism and see if it was something I could pursue full-time. (I realized I couldn’t keep up with the pace of journalistic writing, and the money wouldn’t be enough in and of itself to thrive.)

This was the first time I was taking an active role in taking control of my life, but it was resulting in a lot of disappointment and retrospective regret.

And as I’ve settled over the past couple of years into corporate America, I realized once again that my life has become characterized by complacency and apathy. I’m not tuned into what the company is doing on nearly any level (product, corporate, etc). I don’t participate in company webinars or workshops or activities or anything. I don’t follow what’s going on in the broader business world. I don’t feel engaged or invested in the work that I’m actually doing. I just…haven’t really given a shit about any of it. And even worse, I haven’t taken any real steps to change that.

Sometimes it feels like I’m just…existing. Not actively trying to figure out what I want out of my life and working towards those goals, but just passively going through the same motions everyday. And it was only recently that I realized that I desperately want to change that.

So I’m making this post mostly as an act of self-accountability. By the end of 2021, I want to take major strides in rectifying all this. I want to go back to being the main character in my own life story, instead of a recurring character. I want to feel like I’m actually invested in the work I’m doing, the company I work for, the people I’m around. And if it’s in a different industry, or a different job function, or a different state, then I want to make that happen to.