I moved to Melbourne a few weeks ago with no real plan.
Significant rent, no safety net, and this gut feeling that if I didn't go all in right now, I'd spend the rest of my twenties convincing myself I was "almost ready."
I sat at my desk and recorded the first episode of my podcast this week. And while I was talking, something clicked that I’d been circling for a while.
The entire system we grew up in was designed to give us one thing - the feeling of knowing what's next.
School gave you the timetable.
Uni gave you the semester plan.
Even the shitty group project had a deadline.
You always knew what was coming, and it felt safe, not because the path was good, but because the path was simply just there.
And then you step off it, and suddenly there's nothing laid out for you.
No structure, no semester, no one telling you what to do next Tuesday.
And that’s the place where most people panic and run back to structure (9-5 work, internships, 2,3,5 year plans).
And some things simply just have structure. I’m not saying don’t plan ever again, and fuck off any plans, even if you like them.
But I've wanted to run back too. Not to a degree, that ship sailed in 2023, but to the feeling.
The comfort of someone else having figured it out for me.
But…
Certainty was always an illusion.
The person in the corporate job who "has it all figured out" is one restructure away from being just as lost as you.
I literally watched it happen this month with someone I'm working with, two jobs in a row, let go from both, and she's creative, capable and hard working.
No one knows what's going to happen next.
And the only difference between you and the person who looks like they've got it all together, is whether they're honest about that or not.
I think there's something kind of beautiful in that, because once you stop pretending you need to know, once you stop chasing that feeling of safety that was never real to begin with, you get to ask a much better question.
Not "what's the safe option?" but something more like, “what would I create without that fear dictating things?”
There's a star I can see from my bedroom window back in Perth.
I used to stare at it and just ask it things in my head, while in my usual nightly existential k-hole.
What do you know that I don't? What do you see from up there?
I don't know why I'm telling you that.
Maybe because uncertainty isn't something you should be trying to solve like a puzzle.
It's something you learn to sit with, stare at, and eventually fall in love with, because it means nothing's been decided for you yet
It means the page is blank and the pen is in your hand. Isn’t that great?
If you're someone who has all this energy for something but you can't quite name it yet, I think that's the starting point.
The people who figure it out aren't the ones who had the answers,
they're the ones who got comfortable not having them.
Talk soon,
Sam
ps: I made a podcast. Episode 1 is up and I talk about all of this and more, including why being an "idea person" is just a defence mechanism and why Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death rewired my brain.
I also built something I wish I had when I was younger. If you're 18-25 and you don't know what to do with your life, this might help more than 12 years of school did. 25 minutes, completely free - take the MyTwenties assessment
You can read my book The 3rd Path here.
ciao
