In two weeks I will be starting my first full-time office job – the start of my career. When’s the next time in my life that I’ll be able to go to Pizza Hut at 3pm on a Wednesday? The prospect of being chained to a desk for the next 40 years is, frankly, one that I find terrifying. I’m 22 now. My working life will likely be twice as long as that again. I can’t even fathom a time period that long.
On top of the whole “what the fuck am I doing in life”, there are a million other different worries. What if I suck at my job? What if there’s an asshole in my office who, for whatever reason, just doesn’t like me? What if I get ousted in some sort of office coup, despite my love of Robert Greene? I can easily rationalise these as the standard going-into-a-new-place worries, the same worries that every fresher or new kid at school has, that almost always prove to be either unfounded or irrelevant.
But that large, looming worry, the fact that I am slowly transitioning from being a child to an adult, is unavoidable. All my life I’ve thought of myself as a smart kid, someone with “potential”. Now comes the time when I have to actually do something. And I’m scared.