The future is an exciting place. I plan to visit it one day. Perhaps tomorrow.
The future is basically all I've been thinking about lately, for good reason. As stated many times before, I will graduate in not too long. And when that happens, the controlled and regulated part of my life ends. Not entirely; after all, college has advisors and stuff to help you along. But basically, I'm getting tossed into something that my whole life has prepared me for.... not at all. If my stepmother decides to read this (she's read my rants before, so I might as well acknowledge it), I'd like to make the point that independence has really never been cultivated in me. I've more or less had to force it along in what seems to be opposition to my parent's general will. Not the kind of independence where I get a job and do my own laundry or anything. I mean real independence. Thinking for yourself, coming up with plans, experimenting with stuff. Doing one's own laundry and being able to put up with mindless drone work is important. Sure it is. But it's not really what gets people where they want to get. They're sort of the things you can figure out as you go along, hopefully without mishap.
Not that kind of independence. I refer to the independence that makes people point at something and say "I want to do that" and then go out and figure out a way to do it. The whole school structure and the way people are encouraged to raise children touts how it stimulates creativity and whatnot. But I've mostly just found it to be rather confined. Giving you one assumed avenue for success. And for a lot of people, it works. Maybe not perfectly, but it works. I'd love to have the confidence to say "fuck it" to the whole idea of a linear path to suburbia and do something extraordinarily exciting with my life. But that's not the kind of person I've been raised to be. I can talk about it. But I'd probably never be able to achieve it.*
So I'll keep on the whole college bound path thing. Maybe I secretly wish they'd kick me out so that I'm forced to do something new and interesting. But it's far more likely that I just gravitate towards the nearest locus of order and stability. Even if I don't really fit there. Maybe that's why the college selection process was easy for me?
None of them really fit.
Self confidence is the key, dear readers.
*This ironic summing up of the problem is... well, ironic.
This is weird...but I'm kind of feeling the opposite. I've chosen the path that isn't quite expected, is a little outside the norm, and right now, all I want to do is go to U of M or State like everyone else.
ReplyDeleteBut then again, I always did want to be normal.