Everyone has fears: some people are fearful of spiders (I find them to be adorable), others are afraid of heights (why do you think I’m short?) and me…I’m afraid of being comfortable. Anyone who knows me knows I’m usually stressed out (even if I have little to do) I can’t relax, ever. When everything is done I think of wanting to do more (I live by that nowadays); make a short film, write some poems, write an article, work on looking for an internship for the summer. I’ve hit the point where I’m not a fan of having nothing to do, there’s always something for me to do. It’s this mentality of there’s always something to do and not doing anything is the worst thing I can do because it accomplishes nothing (except rest).

But why am I afraid of being comfortable? I feel like that the moment I’m comfortable with my life is the moment I stop pushing myself to do the next thing, to do more; that’s no bueno. Perhaps it’s being a product of my age: Internet, work and life are interconnected to the point where there’s little separation between it all. Perhaps it has to due with my personality type (ENFJ if you cared) maybe I’m just unable to relax (very likely). I have to write on my schedules a time to relax, which, as my friend pointed out, makes it impossible to actually relax because it makes me think of what’s next. Which is very true, I could be playing pool and be thinking about my next class or next paper to being doing right after the game is over (despite being very competitive). Sometimes I do wish I could just lie in a hammock and not think of a darn thing, I asked a friend how to relax and he said, “think of nothing and just chill.” How do you do that?

Anyway, I have this grand plan of undergraduate and graduate. Graduate early, start my masters in whatever I’m going in, finish quickly and move on with life (or get a PhD, I’m unsure). I’ll always be working on the next big thing in my life: undergraduate degree in sociology, graduate degree in sociology or career counseling, move, gets a job, etc. How can I get comfortable when all of that can literally happen within the next five years? In the meantime, as an undergrad, do an internship, research, have a job, be engaged on campus with extra curricular, etc. But that still doesn’t quite feel like enough yet, there are times where life feels routine and that terrifies me because it feels like comfort. I freak out and begin to plot the next thing to start in my life. This semester I decided to increase my work load for next semester because I woke up one morning and thought, “this has become my life, it’s become automatic…it’s me right now.”

The closest I get to relaxing is sitting down watching tv and fiddling with my thumbs. Even then my mind races to homework, an idea, a to-do list. At night I lie down and do all I can to exhaust myself beforehand to sleep because if I’m not utterly exhausted then I overthink a million impossible scenarios. What would happen if I let myself get comfortable? I don’t want to know. Here’s where it shows the most, when a classmate asked the rest of us about how we’d feel about “settling down” (which to me, sounds comforting) I replied, “When I get married, I’d rather not ‘settle down’ but have someone to do some crazy things with, where we’d try new things often and randomly because otherwise it becomes routine…that’d bore me.” Some people thought it was weird…others thought it was cute…one called it goofy. That’s okay. Just don’t let me get comfortable with life, or it’ll bore me in the vast world of limitless impossibilities.