I don’t really know what I am doing. My friends are buying houses. Getting kids. Getting married. They are getting promotions or traveling the world. And I am recovering from a year filled with long covid and burnout. I am doing a job I did before. In a country I have been living in for 7 years in a row now, in a city I love. I moved into a new place. And I am getting better step by step. But there is no higher purpose. Sure, I want kids and to get married and to buy a house, but at the same time I do not want to settle. I do not want things to be set in stone. I want to explore different lives. One where I live more closely to nature, where I am outside most of the time. One where I am creating, making music, exploring new sports and hobby’s. I want to explore traveling more again. And I want security. I want a community but I also long for adventure and newness. It is all a mess. Meanwhile the pressure of being in my thirties looms. There is a deadline for certain things. And there is an image that has been carved out for where I should be at this age. There’s the all-encompassing fact that I do not have the financial means to just ‘do whatever the fuck I want’ right now. The main question I am facing is: do I just live this slow life for a bit longer, before I rip my life open again? Do I move abroad and start a new life? Do I stay and buy a cat and enjoy the simplicity of being ‘just ok’? Do I want to start anew, in whatever shape and form the new will come? How do I acquire clarity in the fog that is the future?