It’s a Relief To Be Done

Well, I graduated today from undergrad.

This week really has felt like quite the experience of seeing everything from the past abruptly emerge when nobody sees it coming. Then again, it is a time when all the people are back after four years together. Part of me has spent most of the day feeling slightly just disappointed about the ending that I didn’t anticipate. The other facet of it too probably came from the way that I know the next few months are going to bring me back to near-complete isolation. But I think that the biggest thing that really stood out for me was that I was very okay that things were coming to a close.

So much of the last four years for me has been about really trying to figure out what lasting impression I leave on the people I care about. For so many reasons, I have come to be more trusting of my instincts, for better or for worse. It’s been much of how I’ve been able to find a way to just continue to persist, even amidst various (self-inflicted or selfishly derived) confrontations with where I wanted to move next. I have just gotten a hell of a lot more confident in my ability to just take life’s punches and roll with them because I need to live another day (however dire or serious that may sound). I have to keep not letting life dictate how I want to live. That feels a little corny to say or articulate, but it’s real.

So much of where I’m at in this particular life turning point is about trying to make myself accountable to the attitudes or outcomes I live through. I just need to be willing to place responsibility on myself to believe I can correct my own mistakes or errors. It’s about trying to sustain some level of consistent practice in self-criticism to an end, something I believe I have failed at. I have to believe that I can be the person that I know is possible.

I have much to contemplate on this next chapter in life, so for now, I’ll just keep those thoughts and ideas to myself. For now, I’ll just say I’m sincerely grateful to have had the chance to go to school and grateful to my family and friends who made all of this possible. I would not have made it through these last four years without them all.

It’s a relief though to be done, and I’ll see what’s in store in the coming months & years.

Being Noah Tesfaye #287: It’s a Relief to be Done

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