The way life has continued since my last update, the more the chakras from Avatar: The Last Bender have remained saliently in mind. Particularly since current themes relate to the starting one I skipped: Earth/Root—governing survival, impeded by fear.
At this moment, I find myself dealing with the uncomfortable reality I foresaw at the start of my third and final undergrad semester back in January, the inevitable challenge of having to find a new source of employment after an extended 1.5 year career break and as a returning adult student of an older age in this hostile job market and worsening AI-bubble economy. Indeed, I dreaded it so much in advance that it really took the wind of my graduation sails, I didn’t bother taking any sort of professional-grade photos to commemorate the occasion. It felt more like an ending to the “easy” leg of the journey.
And that was just on the surface level. Layers deep, the existential worry that all of this—getting a legal name change, graduating community college with honors in ’25, graduating public university magna cum laude in ’26—would still fail to make a difference. That I would still be bound to face the same inability to progress professionally as I did before I earned academic accreditations to my name.
In addition to these anxieties, I’ve also been having to balance the stressors of financial obligations, graduate coursework, and tuition affordability. Never mind the psychological tolls of being out of work for so long on both my sense of self and my guilt for having to rely on others.
Yet, much like in the cartoon, fears are efficiently dissipated by acknowledging them and clearing one’s thoughts.
As trying as the circumstances of this present reality are, I force myself to remember of the strong confidence others have expressed in me along the way in this journey. Fellow undergraduate classmates and Associated Students college council members. Instructors with vast experience in academia and in commericial business activities. Even the institution itself, with it’s offer of admission to undergrad studies and pre-qualified offer for graduate program matriculation. Never mind countless others throughout the entirety of my life, from employers and coworkers down to family and friends.
No matter how real and substantive my challenges are right now, I’m still operating from a position of benefit compared to so many unknown people out there. And at this point, I have enough hard-earned confidence to be able to afford myself the expectation of inevitable success.
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