Dear Vita, it's okay to have a pause and gap years

Life advice on taking a pause and gap year
Mt. Ulap, Dec 2018


If you’ve been reading my previous blog entries you’ll realize that most of my introductions start with ‘for the past few weeks/months’ and this post was supposed to start like that as well, but I managed.

Society taught us to reach our goals and to never stop dreaming. Personally I think there’s nothing wrong with that, I just find the fault with not being specific with the process. We were taught that reaching the goal takes up a lot of time, pressure, hard work, and sacrifices but they never let us know that taking a pause is necessary as well.

As I’ve said in my previous post, I try my best to create goals and not timeline and I think that’s how people should start. Give yourself a goal and then start from there, grow from there because you need to do it freestyle.

Coming from a fast-phase the environment I was coded to be a certain type of person. I have to be this, do that, and reach this.

The environment that I was in right now is different from what I’m used to. And when I felt the need to change and adapt I was so disappointed. I was disappointed because I was clueless, lost, and terrified.

I’ve always known what to do because I never ran out of plans but it was different. Pressure and society are the main factors why I can’t think straight.

I was forced to have a ‘pause’ and it felt foreign to me. Yes, I think the last two years of my life are a pause I was not planning to take but had it anyway.

You see, people around me keep on asking if I will take a Masters or even say that I should go to Law school. At first it was kinda bad for my being because I was forced to overthink. I was questioning my decisions and I had a hard time accepting the person that I’ve become because I don’t have the answer when they ask me what my plans are- are you going to Law School, aren’t you gonna take your Masters, how about prof ed?

Yes, for a time I was mad about my decisions because I see lots of my batch mates passing boards after boards, taking masters, and going to law school. I often ask myself ‘what happened to me?’ because I was not okay with the fact that I was missing out opportunities that I know I was capable of achieving.

Thankfully, I learn a lesson or two and that is we should acknowledge the fact that each of us has different timelines. I chose to be this kind of person and I had to be like this for a reason.

To be honest, the glamour of medals, law school, prof ed, and masters don’t excite me right now, I’m not saying it wouldn’t be exciting forever but right now it’s just a no for me. What I learn the hard way in the last two years is the fact that I should be careful in pursuing recognitions and achievements. If I want to have something I have to check why I am doing it and why I am pursuing it. People around me worry about the passing of time saying I should move and enroll now but, to be honest I am more worried that I might get into something and accumulate not just recognitions but the pressure that might weigh more than anything I could ever handle. Being left behind doesn’t bother me but doing something for the wrong reason is what I’m most worried about. I’m worried because the reason why I took it might not be enough to justify the rocks that will be thrown at me, the pain might not be worth it.

I am beyond glad that friends and other people pursue their masters because I know they can do it. I’ve known people who’ve been hiding under their shells and seeing that they are shedding their inhibitions and using their potential makes me happy for them.

I am having a pause and there’s nothing wrong with that. Having a pause doesn’t mean failure, it means pause. I still have plans and goals to achieve and this is not a failure. The last two years of my life were never a failure, it was a learning process that felt like forever but it is necessary for my being.

People, you are not a robot. It might be coded in your DNA to work fast but you need a pause as well and taking it doesn’t make you bad. It makes you human. It doesn’t necessarily mean rest or stagnancy, whatever depiction of the word pause for you is ‘your pause’.







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