The Problem
So I’ve spent the last 18 years existing… and the strange thing is I achieved the goals I set for myself. Got into the school I wanted. Got the scholarship. Made a nice amount of money for myself. On paper, I’m exactly where I wanted to be.
And yet I feel so far away.
You’ve already achieved things that you said would make you happy
There’s this weird ache between achieving what you dreamed of and actually feeling like you’ve made it. I thought hitting these milestones would feel like arriving somewhere. Instead, it feels like standing at the base of a much larger mountain I didn’t know existed.
The Tiredness
I’m tired. Like a deeper form of tired. I’m tired of waiting for life to happen. Tired of glimpsing my potential without becoming it. Wishing andw writing about who I want to be has started to feel like a substitute for actually becoming that person.
There’s a certain kind of self-deception in journaling and planning and reflecting. You sit down, you write about your ideal self, and somewhere in that process your brain gets a hit of nice dopamine. Like you’ve already done something. But you haven’t. You’ve just written about doing something.
The Narrative Problem
I read a lot of fiction this past year. Stories where the protagonist just rises. Gets better through sheer willpower and refuses to stay down. There’s something intoxicating about those narratives.
But like at some point my love narratives became so much that I’ve been treating my own life like a story I’m watching rather than one I’m writing.
There’s a line I keep coming back to: “Man is both the marble and the sculptor.” You are the raw material and the one who has to do the carving. No one else is coming to shape you into who you’re supposed to be.
Among Wolves
This year was my first at CMU and here’s the thing about suddenly being surrounded by exceptional people, it’s disorienting. Some of my peers own actual businesses. Some are genuine prodigies. And I’m sitting here wondering how the hell I ended up in the same room as them.
But there’s wisdom in proximity right? Walk with wolves long enough and you start to understand how they move. You pick up their habits, their standards, their pace. The gap between you and them becomes something you can actually close, rather than some abstract distance.
I’m not there yet. But I’m in the room. That has to count for something.
The Regret Framework
I’ve always measured my life by one metric: how many regrets will I have on my deathbed?
Life optimization, in my mind, is regret minimization. Every choice filters through that lens. Will I regret not doing this? Will I regret spending my time this way?
And lately, the regrets have been piling up. Hours lost to scrolling. Days where that pass by in a blur. That’s a sign. When your regret count is going up instead of down, you’re doing something wrong.
The Only Truth I Know
So I think to sum it up. Here’s what I’ve learned in 18 years:
The only way I’ve ever gotten anything in this life was by going and grabbing it.
Not waiting. Not hoping. Not manifesting or visualizing or whatever else people tell you to do. Just identifying what I want and relentlessly moving toward it.
Waiting is a trap. Planning can be a trap. Even reflection like this very post—can be a trap if it becomes a substitute for action.
So here’s to less waiting. Less writing about who I want to be. More becoming.
Entering year 19. Let’s see what happens. Happy New Years