For a while I've had such a negative outlook on life. I didn't know what I was meant to do, didn't believe I could successfully achieve anything but tried hard to avoid failure at all costs. Of course that meant I didn't chase after any opportunities or took any risks because of how afraid I was to fail.

Today was hard. After I took a standardized test today, the first thing I did when I got in the car was cry. I beat myself up about not being smart enough, and about not being meant to do what I sought out for so long. Since I'm never ready to accept the worst, I'm quite terrified of what will happen when I get my results back in a month. When it took a while for my friends to calm me down, I thought about advice a mentor gave me a couple of months ago.

I voiced all of my 'what if's' and fears about what happens when things go wrong (i.e. what happened today), and he just sat there and said, "so what?" I mean, it really is, after all, just a test. I usually considered a failure to be a set back in my plans. In actuality, it doesn't set my entire life, and it doesn't really mean anything. And I may not believe that now, but in hindsight, a booklet with a bunch of questions doesn't mean anything in regards to my intelligence, and what I was set out to do in life. I can still move forward.

Life in its entirety is a mysterious thing. It's a bunch of closed doors with question marks on them. And for a while I was just tethered to one, wondering about what was behind the others. I didn't realize until today that I've actually delved into a new door. As I've mentioned in a previous article, I took off a year after college and vowed to try new things. I recently got a job in publishing (a job completely unrelated to my degree) just to test the waters. Turns out, I fell in love with it. For once, I enjoyed getting up in the morning to go to work.

At 22, I'm still learning new things about myself. I'm at a crossroads in my life right now; I'm torn with what I want for my future. Yet I think I'm tired of being so afraid of everything. I'm tired of missing out on things and not taking enough risks. So I've decided I'm going to have it all. I'm going to open every single door and conquer it all. If I fail, so what? - I move on to the next door.

So maybe I still don't know what I'm meant to do, but for now I think I'll try everything out and enjoy life. It's just a new, positive outlook.