Not all who wander are lost

         
"Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window."








            2 am to 4 am are always the best and worst times of the night. I remember this episode of How I Met Your Mother in which the stated that nothing good happens after 2 am. With all due respect to the geniuses of that show, I've often felt that the only time I ever think clearly is in the middle of the night. I've always thought that I had many vampiric qualities, like being a night person and sparkling in the sunshine. Perhaps that is why I think so clearly in the silence of the night.
        

I turned 25 two days ago.

        Let that reverberate in your mind, let it simmer, let it bounce around like a ping pong ball. Perhaps to some their 25th is not that big of a deal. To me, its been the deadline, the day of dread that has chilled me to the bone for years. On my 23rd birthday, I was miserable. I had a mental countdown to that day. I cried the morning of it. For my 24th, I was sick and not just from having my gallbladder taken out two weeks before. I had dreaded my 25th birthday for two years and I had every expectation of having a dramatic event that would put new meaning to the words "psychotic" and "diva."

         To understand the reasons for my feelings, I guess you have to have experienced Crisis Crystal. Existential, Quarter-life, you name it, I've had it. I've been asking myself the big questions for as long as I've had a rational mind that could think about more than the muppets. Where was I going? What was I going to be? Who was I going to be? These questions haunted me. They still haunt me. My lack of knowledge burned through me. With every year the pressure built. WHAT WAS I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE?

          And the answer was quite simply...I don't know. I'm not supposed to know.

          I've tried planning long term, I've tried planning short term. And neither of those plans reach fruition. Its taken me five years to realize that what I think my life will be is probably not going to be even close to reality. I look at my friends. I remember what they had planned in high school, what we planned in high school. And most of them, seven years later, are the exact opposite of what we planned. I'm the exact opposite of what I had predicted. I was supposed to stay in Texas. I was going to be a writer. Maybe I'll go back to Texas. And yes, I am a writer. But I've changed so much that when I look at pictures of myself from that time, there is not a shred of recognition.

           I realized on my 25th birthday that I wasn't going to explode with answers, I wasn't going to know the map to the voyage of my life. I look at the things around me and realize that for all the planning in the world, some day there will be a 30 second window that will change everything. I realize that I cannot rationally predict what will happen. I can just point myself in a direction and keep walking.
           And now? What will I do on the year of my 25th birthday?

           I'm going to change the things I don't like about myself and nurture my best qualities. I'm going to get a job and start saving for things that I know I will want, like a house and child. I'm going to learn how to do the things I've always wanted to do like play the guitar, knit, and learn how to talk like Katherine Hepburn. (don't be alarmed if you're talking to me and I start claiming something "sure is yaaaaughrrrr") I'm going to bump along, getting a job I hope I like. I'm going to make the decision of where I'm going to move to once I get my post college bearings. I'm going to try to stop worrying about the economy, the unemployment rate, and how dismal the job market looks. I'm going to stop worrying about housing markets.

           I'm going to figure out a direction, even a series of directions, and I'm going to walk down those roads and see what I come upon. I realize now, its the only single thing you can really do in a world that is so uncertain. Therein this concept lies a peace that has eluded me for my life. I've given myself a free pass to wander and wonder, to stop and enjoy this moment. To not pretend that I know all the answers. Something I've learned is that I'm pretty perceptive when it comes to my friends, to strangers, but I don't know anything about myself. And if I know nothing about a car, should I really be driving it?

           It's complicated and it's probably foolish but I've gone from killing myself about a future I can't control to realizing that the only constant in life is change. Right now, the solace I seek is found in the consistency of change and that my life will soon be different.