What am I doing?

Somewhere along the line, while studying for my IO psychology midterm tomorrow, I suddenly felt this lack of purpose. I stopped studying for a bit, went to take a glass of water, came back, sat down and just stared at my curtains.

What am I doing?

The thought kept creeping across my mind. Not in the "I'm supposed to be studying... what am I doing?" sense, but in more of an existential sense; "what am I doing with my life?"

I found myself thinking, examining what I have been doing so far.

I go to school, I come back home. I study, I play games in between studying sessions. Games which just kill time, non-purposeful games. I study, I get good grades. And then what? I complete my degree. And then what? I proceed to live life. Live life. Hmm..... Live..... Life........ doing what?

My mind fast forwarded to 10 years down the road. Hopefully I'm happily married and have found some purpose in life. Maybe I'll spend my evenings watching TV or browsing the web. Maybe I'll find a hobby somewhere along the way and end up spending my free time pursuing that hobby. But all this seems too... "chancey". It's as though I'm trusting time to just solve the problem for me, when I know that if I don't do anything to change my lifestyle now, chances are that my life will just be the same 10 years from now. So what if I'm married, have kids, have a stable job with minimal worries? The foundation of my life will not have changed; I will still be looking toward to next goal, chasing that goal until the goal is complete. Other goals will come along, I will take up those goals, and chase those too. Can life ever be more than just an endless chasing of goals? At the end of the day, while the activities I do will be different, will the purpose of doing them ever be any different?

Purpose. What a word. Wait. What is my purpose? Am I here just so that I can die? Even being here "to die" is a purpose. Do I have a purpose?

I guess I have not fully accepted the fact that one day I will die. I live life looking forward to the next day, and the day after, and the day after, and the day after. An infinite number of days after. But that means that... death will never come, because there will always be "a day after tomorrow". If I've not accepted that one day my life will end and that tomorrow will not come, then have I accepted that my purpose on Earth is "to die"? I guess not. I guess my view of my purpose now is, just to get by. To finish today, and start tomorrow. In this sense, I am purposeless. No future to look forward to, not even the lack of a future (death) to look forward to. And I ask myself, why is that?

I realize all this sounds too damn familiar. It sounds like something from an abnormal psychology textbook. I figured that I'm on the verge of having an existential crisis. I need to steer away from that. Things can get dangerously blue if I don't.

In order to do that, I need to focus on something. I need to study for my test tomorrow. And tomorrow? I need to do my readings for Wednesday's class. Wednesday? I need to do my readings for Thursday's class. Thursday? I need to study for Friday's midterm. Friday? I need to get some rest (falling sick) so that I can give tuition on Saturday. Saturday? I miss Linette, and given that I haven't been spending very much quality time with her, I'd very much like to spend Saturday evening with her.

But you see, in that plan, there's the cycle right there. The never ending, infinite loop. To finish today, and start tomorrow, only to finish tomorrow and start the following day.

I guess that's where I am now. One day I will return to this page, and I will finish thinking what I was thinking. But for now, IO psychology beckons.

"Motivation" - hahaha what irony.