repost

There was a time when I was sure I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I wanted out of life and you'd be damned if you or anyone else got in the way of it. I was a force of nature, and I knew it; it was the only piece of me that I actually liked because if I held on to that little fact and guarded it dearly, every insecurity, every shadow of doubt, would starve in the hostile environment that was this psyche. Every "A", every executive decision, every move I made was a calculation to ensure the complete manifestation of, what I felt, what was promised to me. I wouldn't allow myself to call it--whatever it was I wanted--an ambition, a goal, because those words implied aspiration.

An aspiration left room for failure. There was no failure in my world. Everything was either one step toward my future, or two. No backwards, no lefts, no rights, no ups, no downs. Only forward.

But I've been falling. What direction, I haven't even the care to look. I just know I'm far from where I was only a summer ago. More than a few both intoxicating and sobering things have occurred in my life during the last few months, setting off a chain of deconstructions, that have split that former steel tower of myself. My trip to Washington D.C. was a big part of that--the life of a foreign service officer would take away more from me than I could ever have to give.

Now that I've given up on that image, I'm lost. I am enthralled with the current of possibility and I'm back to where I was just before I entered high school. I could thrive under a title of a journalist, meeting people and knowing their stories, but I could only dream of the stability that comes with being a teacher. I could cultivate a home and a family as a teacher, but I could only dream of the fulfillment that comes with being a health policy analyst. I could establish a place in the world as a health policy analyst, but I could only dream of the freedom that comes with being a journalist. And so it goes.

If only I could, then I would.

At this point, I don't think my major is going to matter as much because International Relations is going to end up taking me somewhere. Though I'm not sure where exactly.

Despite this, I'm happier than I remember being in any other point in my life. I am free.

---

A lot of this still rings true.

Jes sayin' this thing deserves a repost. I originally put this up on facebook in Jan 08. I remember why I was so happy: it was because I already replaced one passion with a new, more exciting one. I wasn't happy about the freedom.

Now I have neither. Free. Completely free. Aimless is the better word.

I have a secret dream: drop out of college, travel the world, and let the Earth teach me the lessons I need to learn.

It's never going to happen, though.