Let me set the scene for you. A while ago at work, I had to take a few assessments for potential coaching and development opportunities. They were generally associated with critical thinking (vomit noise) and how I would normally act or perform under highly stressful situations (audible eye roll). It took a while to get the results back, so when I have previously mentioned that I overthink my overthinking, this is one of those times, but probably tenfold compared to most. Mainly because I am so damn hard on myself and I hate, with the fire of a thousand suns, to fail. I am not oblivious to the fact that failure is a part of life and one can learn a great deal from failure, but shit, that doesn’t mean I have to be okay with it. So, when I got the results back and saw the scores, I was sure those scores were going to be accompanied by a white banker’s box for me to pack up the shit in my office and hit the pavement to the unemployment line.

The overthinking, as per usual, got the best of me. I couldn’t have misread those results any worse than what I did. Shockingly, wrapped up in all of the spider webs, hamster wheels, rabbit holes, and dark cavernous voids in my head, I’m not a complete idiot. That was a nice little relief to receive on that Friday afternoon. During this process, I was able to sit and talk for several hours with the individual who administered the assessments and go over the results and what they actually meant.

All of that information could be used for an entirely different conversation, so I won’t bore you with all of those details that I found fascinating. But deep down, I am a giant nerd, so I wasn’t all that surprised that I was fascinated by them. In just over two hours of conversation and going over the results of these assessments, I found out more about myself than I have in about the past baker’s dozen years (that’s 13 for those of you who didn’t know).

Towards the end of the conversation, I finally had enough courage built up to ask, “How will these assessments help me with any possible advancement opportunities, or will they even help me at all?” Apparently, that was the wrong question. Before giving me an answer, I was asked, “Well, what do you want to do?” I couldn’t answer it, and I still can’t. When I couldn’t come up with an answer, I was asked an even more difficult question that kicked me right in the, well, use your imagination. But that goddamn question hurt and knocked the breath out of me. I was asked, “Are you living someone else’s dream?” WHAT IN THE SHIT SANDWICH IS THAT?!?!?

I’ve been playing that fucking question on repeat for the past two weeks in my head, and my brain refuses to find a different track. I am having the hardest of all times trying to wrap my head around it and how to come up with an answer.

I thought I did the right thing. I went to college (got kicked out twice, but what can I say, it was much easier to stay in, eat Fruity Pebbles, and watch sweet, sweet Kelly Kapowski on the endless reruns of Saved by the Bell). Anyway, I digress. I finally got my shit together and graduated. Apparently, I was on the seven-year plan with no doctorate! Thumbs up to me!

I then proceeded to join the great American workforce for about 10 years, doing a job that I really quite enjoyed. However, it was terrible hours, zero dinero, zero growth opportunities, and had about -89% of anything to do with my degree. But I sure did have fun and met a lot of amazing people. But then I got stuck…again, in the revolving circle of “What do I want to do?” Being that I am not the best decision-maker, I took a leap of, well, not faith, and I will leave it up to you to decide what I took a leap of. I made the decision to go to graduate school and get my Master of Business Administration (MBA). Truly the most grueling almost two years of my life, but hey, I finished and graduated with an almost perfect GPA, which I am not one to brag or boast about, but fuck, I was proud of that insanity of an accomplishment. I have never had to read or write so much in my life. I swore I would never hunt and peck around the keyboard again, but what do you know, here I am doing that very thing (palm to face).

Once again, I was not necessarily stuck, but again asking myself, “What do I do, or more importantly, what do I really want to do?” It may come across as negative, but even though I am proud of what I accomplished with graduate school, I am not sure that it did what I thought it would do as far as career advancement. It took me a long time to become okay with that thought because, regardless of what fork in the road to the taco truck I take, I will always have it, and I am okay with that, whether I end up using it or not.

What I struggle with most of the time is that I, for whatever reasons, tend to believe that we all have something we want to do. However, I also believe that most of us, probably from before we can even remember, had people in our lives who had certain expectations they wanted us to meet, or certain paths they wanted us to go down. I think a lot of that is put upon us because those in our lives want the best for us. But what if those certain expectations that are supposed to be the best for us really aren’t what drives us or moves us forward through this crazy little thing called life?

I think a lot, if not the majority, of us have gone down certain paths to make certain people in our lives proud of us. Even though those paths do nothing for us, we still follow them because they were created for us and we didn’t really have much of a say in them. And that is perfectly okay. It is simply the nature of living and growing up. The struggle is deciding when to venture off the paths that were created for us and choose a different fork in the road.

Unfortunately for me, the fork I choose inevitably leads right to the goddamn taco truck, and I end up in a food coma with the meat sweats and have zero idea of what in the hell I want to do.

That always brings me back to the lingering question: Am I really doing what I want to do, or am I living someone else’s dream?

I think a lot of this comes with risk. I am notoriously not a risk-taker. For Christ’s sake, I don’t even gamble or buy scratch-off tickets. But I know a risk needs to be taken. The big question is: what risk? All I know is that regardless of what risk I take, as long as that fork in the road leads to a taco truck located on a secluded island somewhere, I can live with taking that risk.

I would be curious to know how many of you have taken risks to do what you want rather than what others had planned for you. I would also be curious as to what helped you make the decision to take those risks and how you justify saying goodbye to certain parts of your life to do what is necessary to make sure those risks paid off.

I will leave it with this. This is something I struggle with every day, but this has been helping me find the right path to the right taco truck.