Events seem to be coming together to conspire against me. I spent the weeks leading up to school griping and complaining about how I didn't know where I would end up after college, forgetting that I do not exist in a black hole. Time has meaning, and carries on as it always has. I will not step into college, blink, and step out of it again with no progress to my character or person.
I mean, college is progressing at a frighteningly rapid pace (um, it's almost October? When did that happen?), but we still measure it out in hours and days and weeks, not microseconds. There's still time to figure it out.
To be honest, one of my biggest freakouts was directly related to grad school. Did I want to jump right in, or take a break from structured education? How was I going to pull together a portfolio of my writing as I simultaneously pulled together a senior art show, readings for three upper-level Lit courses, and tried for my first 4.0? The answer, of course, is that I wasn't. To finish my college career with a bang would require more emotional stamina and mental fortitude than I'd heretofore expended, and I was going to have to give something up, or I'd never be able to sustain it.
Yes, an MFA in Creative Writing is on my list of life goals (a list I refine every couple of months). But now I'm in no particular rush to complete it.
I started this blog as a way to record my journey through senior year and beyond, figuring out the path my life would take. So even though updating it feels like a constant cry for attention, I'm going to do it anyway, because I want to be able to read through it in twenty years and laugh at myself, and doubly appreciate the path that led me to wherever forty-one-year-old me will be. Yes, this is my first update in weeks, and we're already a third of the way into the semester, but hopefully I'll be a little more profuse in future.
I said earlier that events were conspiring against me, but 'for me' is definitely more accurate. This entire school year is screaming in my ear GET OUT THERE! Two of the three literature classes I'm taking focus heavily on the theme of travel, and right now we're reading a fantastic travelogue by William Least Heat-Moon about his voyage across the US solely by water. My novel-in-progress centers around a Lewis and Clark-esque journey across post-apocalyptic America. I keep stumbling into conversations with friends about their plans to move to Germany or the UK, to work in the missions field in Romania, or to find some way of escaping the humdrum expectations of society and just wander.
In the first day of World Lit II, our professor encouraged us to read the coming travel-based books with an eye not to the intended destination, but to the journey: "The road itself is home." It's probably freaking my parents out to think of it, but that's exactly my plan. Whether the road is literal or figurative, I intend to face the oncoming uncertainties with an attitude of joy and curiosity, content to walk strange highways merely for the sake of exploration.
When I was a kid, I had this insatiable desire to see what was beyond the horizon. Whatever furthest point I could see, I wanted to walk to it and find the next line of trees or hills or mountains, just keep going until I'd seen all there was to see. I doubt I'll ever see every square mile of land the globe has to offer, but even a fraction of that would suffice.
On Facebook I mentioned WWOOFing, and so far that's the tentative plan. When I graduate in May, I hope to WWOOF my way through a significant portion of the US. Then I'll try for an internship with Culture Magazine. After that, who knows? All plans are subject to the unpredictable whims of life. And that's part of the fun.
