I am thinking about my future now

I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.

I have internalized this way of thinking into my neural pathways. I have understood and conceptualized the idea that who I am is up to me to decide. I am the master of myself and of my universe.

With this in mind, I am now at a crossroads, a similar crossroads to what I faced a little over a year ago.

That crossroads is: do I take the safe path, or do I take the path unknown?

When I graduated from Northwestern, I had two choices in front of me:

I could take my return offer at my corporate job. I could return to my old team, to my manager who treated me well, to a stable life that would provide me income and security.
I could throw it all away and join a startup in San Francisco, uproot my entire life, and transplant myself to a place where I knew no one and where I would start from scratch.

I chose the latter. Now, one year after that fateful decision, my life is the best it has ever been.

I am in the best physical shape of my life. I am in the best mental state of my life. I have the best social network in my life.

All of that is because I made that choice.

I'm coming up on my one-year anniversary at my current startup. I know our path to growth is real. I know that the team we have built is solid, but I now have this other opportunity. It's a consumer-facing company. It's in a space that excites me.

Now, nothing is set in stone yet. I'm still in the interview process. But I know that, because of who I am, because of who I have made myself to be, I will receive the offer.

At this point, the critical question is: what path do I go down?

I do not know the answer yet. I'll need to do a lot of self-reflection, but something deep inside of me, something deep down in my gut, is pointing me in the same direction that it pointed me a year ago.

Life is a series of choices. I know that the choices I make will bring me closer to success. I know that I am destined to succeed. There is no question in my mind that I will live the life that I want to live.

Perhaps a part of me has felt that I have stagnated. Perhaps I have learned all that I need to learn from this current chapter. Perhaps it is time to move on, but this determination will come at a later date.

For now, I contemplate.

For now, I think about my future.