These past few nights, I’ve been dreaming of earthquakes and dead ends.

These dreams always begin the same way. A sudden jolt forcefully awakens me in the middle of the night, and I soon realize that the floorboards beneath my bed are swaying like crazy. For reasons my waking self can’t recall, my dream self dashes down the stairs and heads straight for the front door. The ground eventually stops shaking, but I am running even faster and faster, running past streets I no longer recognize yet instinctively know my way around. I am chasing something or someone I can only see out of the corner of my eye—I come close to it (or him or her) twice or thrice, only to encounter one dark alleyway after another.

I have it on good authority (Google) that my subconscious is reacting to an abrupt or startling change in my life, something I don’t feel like I have any control over. The most recent milestone I’ve experienced is graduation, so I can only assume that my subconscious is having difficulty adjusting to the ennui of my current post-grad-pre-work existence: I have friends and batchmates who are already accepting job offers and posting their first-day-of-work selfies, and here I am spending most of my time watching How I Met Your Mother reruns in my pajamas.

For someone who has always had something to anticipate or strive towards, the uncertainty I am faced with now is paralyzing. To some extent, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of us who have recently graduated feel similarly—if this truly is the beginning of our adult lives, how do we ensure that we are making the right decisions?

The short answer is we can’t, but perhaps there’s nothing wrong with that.

I find myself rereading and taking solace in Constantine Cavafy’s Ithaca, which alludes to the 10 years the legendary Greek hero Odysseus spent journeying back to his homeland after the Trojan War. The first time we took this poem up in my high school literature class, I interpreted it as me needing to set a deadline for myself: By the end of college, I had to be certain of my profession or vocation and dedicate the rest of my life to working towards it.

It turns out, however, that Ithacas aren’t always definite destinations. My Ithaca has since taken the form of a short list of goals on my Google Keep: Exercise more often, find a fulfilling job and a writing gig on the side, start my own business, travel with friends, (finally) learn how to park a car. Being a business major has taught me the importance of having success indicators, and I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that with success being a moving target, these criteria are constantly in flux.

I like this new way of looking at Ithaca. The modern world we live in may place a premium on knowledge and certitude, but not having a clear path keeps things interesting, keeps us working and guessing and wondering and exploring. Leaping into the unknown—be it a job, a relationship or a vocation—is always frightening because of the risks involved, but there is also much joy to be found in letting life surprise us. I’ll take my victories wherever I can get them and settle in for what will hopefully be a long voyage.