Feeling Lost

        This year was my final year in university. I recently received my master's degree finally making me feel like I truly graduated. I felt very happy and excited especially that I felt extremely stressed and lost from the beginning of the year until the end while writing my dissertation. It was an exhausting task especially with how much time it took me to finally decide on a topic and to force myself to work on it while feeling doubtful of my capabilities and constantly picturing myself never finishing. However, I pushed through the final two weeks by spending day and night working on it while drinking multiple glasses of tea every day to keep me awake at night. The best word to describe those final days before submitting my work is 'hellish'. It was literal torture, but I enjoyed myself somehow. 

        However, now that I have finished, I feel that my energy diminished. I am always tired, and I am struggling to regulate my sleeping schedule (I can't sleep at night then I spend most of the day sleeping. When I wake up I feel dead, so I do not do anything then I feel bad about myself). I had so many things in mind that I wanted to learn this summer, but because of the pandemic, the school year began late, so it ended late as well. To top that off, I spent most of the previous days struggling with my inconsistent sleep, lack of energy and self-hate. There are only a few days left before the school year starts, and I have to make up my mind about many things, but I feel have not had enough rest. I feel completely drained. Mostly, I feel really lost at the moment. 

        Now that I have graduated, I badly want to find a job; it does not even have to have anything to do with my degree; I just want to experience what working feels like. Perhaps, if I work many hours of the day, it would help me to overcome this tiredness that I always feel when I am at home doing nothing. However, as badly as I want to find a job, I do not know where to begin looking not to mention that I am not fond of teaching, and teaching is the obvious destination of many whose major is English. Even though, teaching is not my favourite job, if I could land it, I would definitely work to the best of my ability. 

        What really bothers me and that I terribly do not want to do this year is pursuing a PhD. Do not misunderstand, I definitely would love to continue; in fact, I have always wanted to continue. With my level and capacity, I should be able to enter, but I am completely tired after finishing my dissertation not to mention that I am unprepared to enter the contest, I do not know how to prepare myself, and I do not want to relive the mental torture of not having a topic to for a dissertation. I feel so doubtful about myself when I see how unprepared I am. I do not even want to continue this line of thought. What I want to say in summary is that I know I should do it and may likely go for it if there is still some time left to prepare, but I was just wondering if there is any effect to not pursuing it this specific year. I know that I have no energy to pour into a PhD, so I know I will not work as hard if I keep feeling so stressed. Is it possible for me to postpone it to the next year without regretting my choice later on? 

        I always face such questions that I cannot find an answer to. There is no telling what the future holds. For example, I am among the top students in my major, so in normal circumstances, top students are given a scholarship to study doctorates overseas. I was looking forward to it; however, this dream was crushed due to the pandemic. That really hit me a certain way as I remember how tiring it was to prepare the papers and the passport along with my friends in hopes of going. That probably was one of the major reasons that I feel extremely tired and let down after graduating. I had a dream and I nearly reached it, but as I said, you can never know what the future holds. All I can say again is that I feel exhausted. It is not that I placed all of my hopes in going; in fact, at some point, I wondered if it was a good idea to go at all. 

        The most annoying thing about all of this is that I truly do not mind anything. I have never been as accepting of fate and life as I am now. Whatever happens is fine as long as I feel peace within myself. Things matter to me, but not to the extent that it would crush me if I could not achieve them. There is always another way to walk and other passions to pursue. What I am truly bothered with is myself at the moment. There are parts of me that I dislike, no, that I hate. I want to talk about them, but I really hate them so much that I feel embarrassed to talk about them to any of my friends. I feel that I have no one I could confide in. If I tell them what bothers me, I know they will start advising me and making it seem like it doesn't matter thinking that that would help me, but it would not. I know how to solve some of them, for some reason I do not. And that is another thing I deeply despise about myself. I want to speak my mind here knowing that no one will ever read this, and even if anyone does, it is no that knows me in real life. But I still feel awkward speaking of such private thoughts. I guess I will keep them to myself for now. I hope I can start working on them so that I become a better version of myself.