There's Too Many Scents to Follow

I feel like I can really sympathize with a pack of hounds who are confused about what they are supposed to be doing. Day by day, my mind seems to change and shift and move until my decisions - and my word - is never definite. This is frustrating for people I interact with, particularly my parents (I'm sure they wonder why I can never permanently make up my mind!) and it's even more frustrating for me, because I want to be true to what I say, so that people will respect me. Instead, because there's a bazillion different things distracting me and a bazillion different life courses presented to me all I end up doing is sitting on my rump, stagnant and stationary while my word grows less and less trustworthy so that it seems like on a daily basis I'm committing social suicide, or at least falling further and further from graces. Why can't I make up my mind? Why do I lack direction, even three years after leaving home and why am I so often so completely unmotivated and varying on a daily scale like temperature between negative and positive? I could kill myself with how much I stress over things unreasonably and yet often, whenever it bottles up too much so that I yelp to the world, it feels like people just shake their heads at me in disapproval, as if my yelping for help is 'bad.'

But why shouldn't I yelp out my worries? Why does society seem to expect me to bottle it in? It seems like in this society, we look down upon the confused and the unsure like we do drunks and druggies. I think it's better if people cry out when they are hurting before that pain escalates. Thinking today as I cleaned my old room in my house, I realized it's rather stupid that society has this expectation of young people that we can just go forth from home and be instantly self directive and mature, when the fact is, in this society, we're leaving home less mature than ever because our society is more confusing than ever. We're less prepared than our grandparents were to leave home.

I think most of my stress stems from me being confused. One day, I can be gung ho about one career path in my life and the next day, I'm iffy about it while another day I hate the first idea completely. I lack the self direction that an adult human should have; in fact, I seem completely unable to direct myself at all except for basic life support ideas and even with those I sometimes fail. I'm like one of those hunting hounds who keeps losing the scent, or distracting itself with other smells but there's no hunter standing by me, saying "No! That's not the scent! THIS is the scent! Go THIS way!" Another analogy is, I'm a horse whose lost its rider in the middle of nowhere and is alone and hasn't the foggiest clue of where home is without that rider tugging on my bit. There's a long list of things which I COULD do, but I'm so bloody confused that I have no idea which one to pick or which idea is the best and there doesn't seem to be a rider or a hunter anywhere who is there to help me out. So far I've just been trusting in my instincts and I haven't gotten myself killed yet doing that, but I haven't gotten anywhere either. Some ideas are smarter than others maybe, but it doesn't matter in the end, because I can't direct myself to any of them! All I know is that I want to write my stories, hike and be happy. Why does finding my way to those three beautiful things seem so impossible?

Blargh.