Walking new paths
The job market is not at its best right now. The industry I work in has been going through rough times since last year. On top of that, AI is changing the job market rapidly.
All this causes stress and concerns among many of the people I interact with daily (including myself), who are worried and uncertain about the future.
Where do these fears of the future come from? What causes the anxiety although here, everyone receives some income after losing their job to cover their basic expenses and needs.
In my opinion, the biggest fear comes from not knowing what happens next. With our jobs, we automatically enter a bubble to the extent that we can no longer think of any other possible scenarios for ourselves without that job. We cannot imagine ourselves walking any other paths if, one day we no longer have our current jobs.
But not knowing a clear path does not mean there are no new paths. They are waiting to be walked.
No road is clear from the beginning. As Kafka said: Paths are created by walking them.
I read an interesting article from Sivers about possible futures . He writes down all the ideas he daydreams about doing some day and keeps the ideas somewhere in case he needs inspiration when the time comes to search for the next thing to do. In the comments, he and some others listed a few of their possible future ideas. Some of the ideas were inspiring for me, and I could remember myself daydreaming about a few of those possible future.
I find the general idea of keeping a list of possible futures interesting. Apart from the fun of making such a list, it is a reminder that our current situations (job, hobbies, our city and country we live in, and many other parts of life) are not the whole world. It is one version of many possible life scenarios, and in the future, this can change without the world coming to an end.