Everyone has regrets, regretful isn't it?
Ever had that morbid feeling that what you are doing is a grave mistake that you'll end up regretting somewhere down the road of life? That's a rhetorical question really, everyone would have experienced it one time or another on occasion.
The tragedy is when you don't even know what you are did or are about to do is something you are going to look back sometime in the future and rue the fact that you didn't really sit down and think things through.
Why am I here again you say? I just noticed that I have a tendency to blog more when I'm having one of my 'depressed spells'. Not that doesn't happen often, but I haven't really had much to seriously worry or regret about for quite awhile now. Petty things like not having enough money and stuff are pretty secondary to things that will affect the rest of your life (I think).
Picture this, since life is all about decisions, coming to a crossroad would be a great analogy. "The road not taken" might have been a lesson I should have paid more attention to. But I guess my 16 year old mind then couldn't comprehend the gravity of the things that the future can hold. Or rather, I didn't want to think too far (was never one to look too far in the future anyway). So lo and behold cometh upon thee on a section of a road that splits in many directions.
Which road do you choose? Some say, "that which takes me to where I want to be faster!" and ask I, "pray tell where may that be?"
Another says, "I'll take the road ridden with strife and obstacles, that I may emerge at my destination with valuable experience."
Another states that, "I'll take the road most people seem to be taking, for it seems to be the safest."
And a poet wannabe goes, "I'll take the road less taken" and I'll sweat drop like those anime characters and call him nuts.
And there are many more, the point is, choices and decisions literally governs our lives and is an integral part of it. Personally, having always believed in diverging and infinite possibilities, it is pretty much safe to say that every big decision in life should always be taken seriously. One wrong decision somewhere (however small) could land you in beggar's alley, if you get my drift.
I never really did understood that poem. Didn't even take literature seriously back in school, so much so that I don't even remember the poet's name. Why take a road that is rarely taken? That could be possibly dangerous, full of uncertain elements, and much more? To a 16 year old who hated to be serious with life, such deep talk was mind boggling sometimes, and to think I always thought of myself as pretty philosophical and sophisticated (stop the gagging already).
Lets put it into context. You graduate from high school, you had your fun during that long holiday. You never ever thought about what you wanted to do in the future, well maybe you had a vague idea about something you'd have liked to do but decided sometime that it isn't really quite safe (road less traveled by?). Comes a time when you can't run from it anymore and you ask yourself what would you like to study.
Thinking back properly, because of that I'm in a position I find myself at today. All this while I had never thought about what I wanted to be. Well there was that dream when I was younger to be a writer, but seeing how my writing sucked as compared to the many people around me (most notably someone who won RM5k from a writing contest *depressed*). And hey I didn't know anything at all about how to get there, never gave it much thought after those years in school when my believe in my own mastery in the English language was cruelly shattered by people (who amazingly didn't know how disgusting it was to constantly have yourself compared to the elite English writers in the school).
So there, I adopted an anything-goes mindset, and actually got persuaded by my parents to take up Engineering. A mistake that cost 7 grand, something I'll not readily forget, and the beginning of many things that I learn that you won't regret until its full gravity hits you on the face with the force of one of Junius Seven's fragments smashing unto Earth in GSD. (the expression like a tonne of bricks is so overused don't you think?) One thing led to another, and I decided to do something I thought I liked. Computers. Ahhh yes, in the context of that mind opener of a poem, that would be the road everyone takes because its safe.
Sometimes I want to blame my parents, for having such an extreme believe that education means everything. It was impossible to say then, "give me some time, I need to seriously consider things". They vehemently objected to me slacking off a few more months to take things seriously for a change. Forced to make a choice, I took the easy way out.
All the while things have been smooth, but I was naive. I thought it was what I could do, what I would be fine with doing. Lately I realized this isn't the case. I'm no good at anything at all. I hate programming with a passion that could rival the g*****ment's love of telling lies and using money on other things that aren't really necessary (like a certain something that would need RM400 million?) or TMNUT's passion for continually making our broadband lives completely FUBAR-ed just because they monopolize the whole bloody damn broadband scene. Multimedia is a pain too. Never been good with it at all. Couldn't draw even if my life depended on it, and asking me for graphical creativity is like asking a cow to climb the KL tower. Everything else either doesn't work for me or I can't do it well.
So where does that leave me? In morbid depression? Uh-huh. What happens when you thought you were clever and picked an easy career route and 4 years later find out you can't do jack shit of whatever those career lines may require you to do? Don't answer that.
1 more semester till it ends, and yet its the final hurdle that all of a sudden seems like 1 I wouldn't be able to leap over. I know life sucks, but that is taking it to the extremes. Then I think back and wonder why I didn't just get them to shut up and let me think thinks through? To perhaps reconsider a writing career, perhaps writing articles? (Newtype magazines sounds appealing after learning about it although I'd have to learn how to write Japanese) So why didn't I take the time to do some research, to mull things over; to actually take up charge and not let my parent's push me around, making my decisions for me (or indirectly forcing me to make one that I would only live to regret). Do I blame them? I'd liked to, but blaming doesn't help.
All I can say is, almost 4 years of studying ICT, and finding right when its about to end that I didn't really liked it as much as I thought I did? That it wasn't what I really wanted to or can do splendidly? GGNORMK.