The Urge To Do Everything and the Paralysis that Follows

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been told that I have a monkey’s appetite. In turkish, this expression is pejorative and used to describe someone whose interests are fleeting, with no relation to one another. I thought that was a bad thing for the longest time, sometimes I still do. I’ve tried out so many things ever since I was a kid and not many of them have stuck, I’ve been an athlete, a writer, a painter, a musician and a dancer. I think it’s normal to want to learn about and be so many things, especially with social media where we’re constantly being exposed to new things.

I’ve always wanted to be an author though, that much hasn’t changed. My grandfather was a very renowned author in Turkey, he was arrested several times for his work (that means he was great) and I remember sitting on his lap and typing random things on his computer, saying I wanted to be just like him. I published my first written work on Wattpad at twelve, it was a Naruto fanfiction that I had the best time writing. One of my friends at the time suggested I post some of my own stories on there too, I did and one of them became very successful, I decided right then and there that I wanted to actually pursue creative writing.

As I grew older, I realized how rare it was to actually succeed, my mother discouraged me from studying creative writing. Being the daughter of an author, she knew first hand how hard it was, she struggled with poverty most of her childhood and didn’t want that for me. I briefly considered journalism but the reality of how Turkey treats its journalists made me realize it might not be the best idea— I was, and still am, a coward on that aspect.

I keep thinking about all the lives I could’ve led and all the things I could study. I’m currently in law and while I love it, I can’t help but feel an ache in my heart for all the things I haven’t gotten to do. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study up until the moment I accepted my university’s admission offer, I had applied to several majors: political science, law, marine biology, ecology, psychology, archeology and so much more. I was genuinely interested in these things and could see myself having a career in them, I still can and crave the knowledge I’d gain from studying those fields.

I’m only 20, it doesn’t even feel like my life has begun, I’m not even sure what field I want to specialize in or if I’ll even continue on with this major. Right now I love it but what if my monkey appetite strikes again and I start to hate it? I’ve always been this way, the second things got tough or became competitive, I’d give up— it’s one of my worst qualities that I’ve been trying to fix.

Two years ago, I progressed greatly. The first year of law is a competition in my university. They take in over a thousand students despite there only being 500 seats in second year. This led to some of the most vile behavior I have ever witnessed in my classmates. People were sabotaging each other, sending fake exam dates and buying a PDF version of our professors’ books, editing them with wrong information and then sending it into the group to eliminate competition. The worst thing was that our professors encourage this behavior.

I failed my first year but first time in my life, I didn’t give up. I worked like a dog and finally managed to pass into second year partially because I loved my major but mainly because I wanted to prove to myself that I could see something through. I was terrified that I’d fail again, that I’d get kicked out of university and would give up once again. I considered switching majors several times, I hated my university and the culture it had created, I felt so alone words can’t describe it but I persevered because I knew I’d regret it. I was terrified of failure, I still am, most of my grades are astronomically low and the classes I do pass are by the skin of my teeth. I live with this fear of failure daily but guess what: so do my classmates. We’re all scared that we’ll fail, that we’ll lose our interests to the unforgiving monkey’s appetite but fear will ruin us.

I think my point with this is that it’s normal for us to want to try so many different things and live so many different lives. It’s also incredibly normal to not know for sure what we want because there is an abundance of choice. I was and still am petrified by everything I haven’t gotten to do. Honestly, I’m just hoping a vampire will offer me the gift of eternal life so I have the time to try everything but I think I’d miss the sun quite a bit so I don’t know. I can’t give you any advice on how to get rid of the fear because I still haven’t gotten over it so all I’ll say is to do it scared. Try everything despite being scared that you won’t be interested in it in the future, what matters is that you’re interested in it now.

© 2025 C. H. Gökdemir. All rights reserved.