“After NYSC, what next?”
I could remember someone always asking me that question so often that I started planning different answers in my head when ever I come across the person anywhere we see.
A family friend wanted me to give them the idea of a proper job. Some friends were already discussing moving to another country to start a master's degree. And someone close will casually ask me when I am getting married and settling down as if life came with a timetable for that hidden inside the family Bible that I don't know of.
And the most hilarious part is that I am an architect already, and yet I still feel like I was guessing with all those unexpected questions coming from just anywhere.
I could remember just an evening like this; I had my system opened, and I was going through one of my unfinished plans that I was still working on while my laptop showed a half written blog post. There was no power supply since morning, and my UPS was already giving that beep sound like it was about to switch off. That moment, I was deciding if I should continue with my drawings or I should simply finish with the blog post and call it a day.
For like five minutes, I felt guilty. Like, I should have known what to do by now. I pounder on that question for a long time before finally deciding. There's always this society standard for us. We should choose a course by maybe fifteen to sixteen. Graduate from school at twenty something. Secure a good paying job, make a lot of money, marry before twenty eight, get your own house, have kids before thirty, and know exactly where everything is heading.
But along the way, no one has ever explained what happened in-between the person who wanted to follow all those choices is different from the person who made those early choices.
I had different life career choices while growing up, and at some point, I believed choosing architecture meant I had chosen my entire future. Now I have gotten to realize that that was only a direction. Along the way, writing also entered my life amongst other things. And other interests changed too. Even some things that I attached a lot of importance to back then no longer really matter to me.
And still, I totally understand the other side. Time is running fast; we all have our own time and it waits for no one to be completely certain again. A lot of moments can disappear when we are in the moment of always saying we will figure everything out. And that part will stay uncomfortable. We just need to exercise patience with ourselves, yet we always need to keep moving.
And I feel where the pressure starts to set in is when we begin to confuse a decision with a permanent identity. And at this stage, I have gotten to a reality that I can make a serious choice without pretending it's my final answer. I can do my architectural work while I still multitask. I can have second thoughts on something without feeling I have wasted my precious time. And that is because I am still a work in progress and I don't seems to have everything figured out now.
And at this point in my life, when anyone comes to me and ask me what is the next plan, I no longer put pressure on myself or feel embarrassed to tell them that I don't know yet. And I discovered that that answer is a very honest one rather that always think of an random answer in my head.
Thank you for reading.
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