Punching Trees

    The more I think about it, the more I realize that Minecraft is a lot like my current life experience. Minecraft seems to represent life pretty accurately for me, they both seem to start out the same way. In Minecraft, you begin with nothing. You have to punch trees and gather resources to survive and improve your life. At the beginning, your goal is clear; build sufficient housing and a stable way of life where all your basic needs are always met.
    Life isn't much different. We all come into the world with nothing; no possessions, no identity, no knowledge of our universe. We develop these things as we grow and we are all given a simple goal to work toward when we are kids; to graduate highschool. In my case, that was the goal I worked toward throughout my childhood, it was the light at the end of my tunnel.
    Minecraft's relation to my life is that you can toil day and night in Minecraft, working to secure your survival. You can take things day-by-day and try to achieve little things in one day that will help you achieve that big thing. My life has been the same way; when I was a kid, I looked toward the day when school would be behind me, and even when I was a depressed, hopeless wreck, I rolled out of bed every day and I made it a point to just live through that day and take it one day at a time.
    However, I'm starting to realize that the same thing that stops me from evolving into the next stage of Minecraft is the same thing that's stopped me in my life.
    In Minecraft, my goal is simple: Build a comfortable life, and my method is largely the same on every map, but once I have that stable experience, a steady food supply, more materials than  Iknow what to do with, then I become lost. The same is true for my life. Once I graduated highschool, a big reality hit me: Where am I going to go now?
    In Minecraft, you can go anywhere from that point. You could set off and look for a place to build a castle or you could plow to the center of the world and continue to expand your mines. You could even aspire to create a giant Redstone-powered mechanism or make an attempt to live in the Nether, but I always find this freedom to be overwhelming, and my freedom in my life is overwhelming right now.

    It's no longer about punching trees and digging out a life block by block. Now it's about making choices that are too daunting to make, committing myself in ways I've never imagined before, and create my own future, and it's so confusing.
    I wish I knew why it was so hard to do this for myself. I thought originally that I had too much freedom, so I tried taking that freedom away from me by enrolling in college and giving myself new trees to punch, but all that did for me was leave me frustrated and even more confused. Then I thought I just needed to focus on one goal and that having someone to help me along would fix everything. Well, now I have that, and I greatly appreciate it, but I still feel lost even when I'm given a specific thing to work on. I've even tried giving myself multiple things to work on at once, but dividing my focus has only made it lessen and not added the variety I thought I needed.
    In Minecraft, I end up wondering around aimlessly even when I give myself a project. I just seem to lose that fire that drives me at the start, just like how the fire is gone from me now as opposed to when I was younger. I think of my goals and my dreams but they don't drive me in the same way. Maybe it's because I don't have set dates for when things will happen and not when they might happen, or maybe it's because the things I want to do are so much larger than anything I've ever done before.
    Usually in Minecraft, I'll burn myself out trying to focus on one end goal. I'll imagine the result but I'll be incapable of completely executing it. I run into the same problem with all of my art and everything I attempt.
    I thought the point of punching away at trees with a single goal in mind would keep my fire lit, but the opposite keeps happening. I'm positive that it works differently for others, that they keep their eyes on the prize and persevere, but I just seem to crumble no matter how clear the goal is, and now, I'm just as confused and frustrated with all this as I was when I left highschool.