Hello,

This post comes from someone who does not know what the “next” step is and wants to let others know that it is okay to not know this step. Recently, I have had many conversations about this topic and how it makes people feel, and they aren’t always positive feelings. Let’s be honest, looking at the state of things at the minute we don’t need another unnecessary reason to feel sad (or at least I know I don’t).

For the longest time, right back to when I started nursery, I always knew what happened next. I had always had an understanding that the next step was what I needed to work towards. I went from nursery, moved to infants, onto junior school, prepared for the big wide world of senior school, hated sixth form and muddled through university. For 21 years I knew what was happening next. I never considered anything other than sixth form, and although I tried to find an alternative to university here, I am now with a degree. I’m not dissing the fact I have a degree, or diminishing the sense of pride I feel about it, because that was three years of incredible doubt, hard work, and a lot of questioning what I was doing. Maybe I feel stuck in a sense that university ending didn’t feel right, all the “I did it!” celebrations were put on hold due to the pandemic. I just moved straight onto the next thing which luckily fell into place quite nicely.

But what is next? At school, I always felt like once I had finished on my academic path that I’d then move onto my dream job and that would be that. Life is sorted. But what if you don’t know what your dream job is? No matter how hard you’ve tried searching for it, or how many “what field should I go into” quizzes you’ve taken. Are you supposed to just have an out of this world experience and then boom, you know? Or do you get a fortune cookie and inside it reveals your career. I knew what I wanted to do when I left year 11, it changed when I got to year 12, changed even more in year 13, at the end of the second year of university I was decided and felt like I had my life together and then fast forward to the end of third year (and the course) and I did not have the foggiest clue. My biggest misconception about the next step is believing it has to be related to some sort of academic or work-related achievement.

That is not what our next steps need to be, go you if that’s what they are, but if you don’t have your next steps lined up as that then that is perfectly okay. Maybe no one quite puts the pressure on themselves that I do to have my life figured out so you could be reading this now thinking, “what the hell is she waffling on about?” but just stick with me. I try so hard to be ahead of the game and at this point, I don’t even know what the game is.

I’m brilliant at preaching about the importance and beauty of enjoying life for what it is and taking every moment as it comes and holding onto those little moments that eventually turn into great memories. Yet my own head is far from that, I love having a routine, I love to do lists and ultimately, I like knowing what is happening. But I don’t know what is happening. I know that I’m happy, I know that I’m healthy, I know that I’ll figure out what I’m meant to be doing. I need to remember that life is not a straightforward path, not everything works out the way you imagine and there’s some random sharp bends that exist to trip you up (especially if you’re as clumsy as I am).

I think that we should work on our next steps being things we enjoy, or little tasks that help us accomplish something personally. Like being able to save to move out or pursuing hobbies that make us happy or taking some time out because at this point, we just need to be a bit kinder to ourselves. If you take anything from this blog post, please let it be to work on going with the flow a bit more. And if you already have that nailed then well done.

Maybe all this is obvious, but we could all do with a reminder once in a while. Be kinder to yourself, no one has this “life” thing all planned out and nailed. Just keep going.

If you got this far, thank you very much and have a lovely rest of the day.

Lia x