towards my own finishing line

 "action cures fear. indecision, postponement, on the other hand, fertilise fear" - david j. schwartz.

it has always been my dream to be a career woman and a young mum at the same time. i think the family planning facet only grew much bigger and became more tangible to me after marriage. in my head lives on a scale balancing what seems to be two dichotomous aspects of my life's priorities  - the ambition to push myself towards what scares me and pursue growth on one end, and on the other - the desire to start a family with the person i love in the prime of my youth. for the longest of time i had been hovering on the sidelines, favouring indecision over decision, fearful of making the choice that i'm scared will result in regret years down the road. but indecision didn't help - it just fertilised more fear, envy and insecurity. 

i had always prided myself on my self-security, but my inability to decide as i sat on the sidelines made me falter. i would watch on, green with envy, as peers of (what i perceive as) my calibre sprinted on towards their own finishing lines. i would feel almost angry at the thought that the corporate world had left me behind while i busied on sorting out the gazillion things that were happening in my personal life. 

but i momentarily forgot (or rather, refused to acknowledge) that everyone has their own finishing line, and that everyone has a different definition of what achieving their goal in life looks like. the family planning desire i had in me felt like a liability as i wrestled with the obvious - why must the woman be the one to sacrifice her career and bear the child? it just felt unfair that i couldn't have my cake and eat it - no, not when i wanted to have the family aspect in the near future as well. and then it struck me - having a child in itself will eventually be the craziest personal growth journey i'll ever have (in god's timing). pursuing growth and starting a family are not zero-sum but actually complementary - growth does not have to be manifested in mere career terminologies - it is so much bigger than what i had boxed it into. and it isn't as if i have to give up my career in its entirety to pursue the quest of childbearing - i will still have my career as i know it now. 

and so, i have made up my mind. i will no longer allow myself to waver, but instead focus my efforts on making my decision the right one for me. looking back, i have always been carving out my own path from the conventional and refusing to succumb to the fear of missing out. from interning in nyc straight out of freshman year to taking a gap semester for 6-months with a tech giant in junior year (and overloading by 28mcs throughout senior year to graduate on schedule), to refusing to settle for any less than the tech industry for my first job despite (what had seemed like) impending unemployment post-graduation, to even getting married and buying our own house at 25 - my best and most secure self is one who pulls heavenly strings while keeping my eyes fixated on my very own north star. these few days i have been pivoting towards taking care of my body and health once again: i've been taking the necessary vitamins, adding an additional meal at night to get my bmi out of the underweight category and finding a feasible workout routine that i can stick to after work. it's been liberating knowing that i'm beginning to invest in myself again, and slowly working towards my new personal goal in this new season of my life.