I’m taking a break from posting photos to type up an actual text blog post. It’s something I’d like to do more of, if only I could find the time other than to post a quick 140-word update.

One thing I truly miss about college is having a mentor– someone I can get advice from any time, bounce ideas off of and generally just admire all of the things they have accomplished and their infinite wisdom. Most of all, though, I miss having an outside person, who was in a position to influence things, who could set the bar high for me to shoot for.

Sure, part of maturity and growing up is that you set your own goals. You have your own work ethic. Really, you go as far as you want to go. No one can really set the goals for you. You choose what you are going to accomplish, and you do it. Ultimately, no one can control it but yourself.

I’m used to having to set the standards high for myself. I’m used to setting my goals at a level that other people might believe to be out of my reach or beyond my experience level. And I’m used to achieving those goals.

But every time I have set those goals in the past, I’ve had people on the sidelines cheering for me. Most importantly, I’ve had someone wiser, with more experience, there to guide me along the way.

Right now, I feel like that piece of my life is notably absent. As a matter of fact, I haven’t had a permanent mentor since I walked out of college with my degree in hand. Yes, there have been people I admire greatly whom I have looked up to. I’ve even had possibilities who might have, at some point, been able to fill that void in my life.

But so many of them have come and gone. Or they walk into my life from time to time to give out pearls of wisdom or a quick shove, but are not reliable. Some have become disenchanted with those things that used to be etched into their very ideals. The work they used to cherish and enjoy has become almost soul-crushing to them. It’s getting increasingly harder not to be brought down, as well.

There comes a time when the goals you set for yourself start to sag to the level of the output around you. If you are the only person setting your goals high, but what you do is viewed as the same as what your peers are doing, it becomes more and more difficult to continue charging at full speed. If you work twice, three times, ten times as hard as the person next to you, but you are both lumped together under the same umbrella, how long can you continue to want to work at that high pace? At what point do you say, “I give up. If he can get away with giving only 20 percent, why should I continue to give 100?”

I wish that someone around me would expect at least as much as I expect from myself. I wish that someone out there would tell me, “Good, but you can do better. I know you can. And this is how you do it…” The key is not that I want to be criticized at every corner, but I want a little bit of push. I want someone to be proud of what I have accomplished, but who is there to also bring me back down to earth and to believe I can do better.

When I was a junior in college, I took an upper-level writing course designed for English majors, specifically those who wanted to be teachers. We had at least two writing assignments every week, usually about four pages on an assigned topic. I always have taken pride in my work, but I must admit that (not dissimilar to my current situation) I was too busy with my other subjects and my three jobs to really throw my all into writing those essays.

Often, I would hurriedly write the essays at 10 at night, blurry-eyed, an afterthought, little planning. The next day, I would hand it in, ashamed that I didn’t put just a little more time aside to do the best I could do.

Yet, the paper would come back to me, with barely a mark, usually with a 5 marked in red at the top (the professor had a 1-5 grading scale, with 5 being the equivalent of an A). Around me, the other students would complain about the 2′s and 3′s they were receiving, wondering to themselves what they had to do to get at least a 4.

And I thought to myself, “These guys want to be teachers?”

Pretty soon, I became used to working at that level. I knew that even working at a lower level than I normally allowed myself to work, I could still pull off 5′s. And still, the other students would receive 2′s and 3′s. I wasn’t being pushed to do any better. And, frankly, I didn’t feel I had the time to push myself.

If I was doing what was good enough, why should I push myself to do anything beyond that?

I completed that class with the highest grade out of all of my peers. But I think I lost a little bit of my integrity with it. Looking back, I still regret how easy it was for me, and I wish I had done what I was capable of.

I’m afraid of that happening again in my life. And I’m afraid that because of it, I’ll be stuck right where I am, forced to be content with mediocrity because, by that point, I will be too old to do anything else. Or perhaps it will be simply too ingrained in me to do anything different.

And how could I find the drive to push myself again?