What just happened?

stuck: adj. a stoppage or a standstill (according to dictionary.com)

This word became the entire summation of the past 4 years for me. Granted, in hindsight, it doesn’t seem like a long time when you consider the 23 years I spent leading up to that with some type of plan, but while you're actually in the position of BEING stuck, its an eternity. I am a 26 year old who has JUST found out that her life will continue, and she will not live the rest of her life in a mind-numbing job that she knows she settled for when she accepted the offer in the first place.

It’s crazy how this emotion seemed to muster up and got increasingly intense until a sudden point when I realized all that I was feeling could be summed up in these three words. All my life I had a distinctive plan and path I was going down. There was never a question as to what the next step in life would be. As a kid you go to school, work hard especially in high school to make it into college, you go to college, graduate and get a job in your major field of study, right? Wow, I really wish I'd know just how different life is outside 'the plan' or more importantly that plans don't really matter when push comes to shove. Life often does not give a rat's a** about your plan and when that happens, you're left to figure it out.

This notion of, 'What just happened?' occurred to me once I'd been at my second job since college for about 6 months. I took the job to get out of my first one, because I was so unhappy. I couldn't believe that after the money, time and education THIS is what I was doing. I was so unhappy, bored and irritable. I began to think of all the other possible ways I could be spending my time. I began to look into new jobs and schools. After much looking and researching it finally dawned on me: I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do. I knew this job was not what I wanted to be doing, but I also could not pinpoint how I did want to be spending my time. How the hell are you supposed to move forward when there's a wall in front of you?

This feeling is scary and almost claustrophobic. It gives you a feeling that you have no control over your life. And for someone like me, who has little patience to begin with, this was not a good place for me to be. All I wanted to do was move forward with my life, but it seemed as if there were this new, unstoppable force freezing me into one spot: stuck.

Have you ever experienced 'the wall'?