Sigh, It is Going to Be a Long One
Per usual, it has been months since I last updated. However, much of this was due to, you guessed it, school. I finally graduated though! So, though I was quite busy it was worth it in the end.
The funny thing is that I have been back for a week now but have yet to touch my Livejournal. The reasoning? Three words: Dragon Age Inquisition. It is consuming my life when I am not hanging out with family. All that said, I have been simply enjoying relaxing. Spending time no longer in school, and no longer worrying about returning, is actually a great stress reliever for myself. I haven't felt so--free--in years. Yet, this freedom is strangely suffocating. I have room to breathe, and relax, but at the same time I feel as though I have too much choice. As though, up to this point my life has been already set before me. Get up, go to school, work, homework, work more, get ready for college, study, prepare for the next school year. But suddenly all that ceases. My past twelve years of living, breathing, and digesting school, and its expectations, has left a large, rather daunting gape. I love that I have, in one sense, my liberty, but the question a now free man might ask, and a legitimate question at that, is: what do I do now?
Sure, existing, relaxing, doing all the things I couldn't do before come to mind. I can watch that television show, I can watch that movie, without the guilt. I don't have to study and that is, of course, a great relief. Yet I still feel as though what has ended was what I have known. It was who I was--The Student. I was ever the apprentice, the learner, the seeker of knowledge and truth, and though I will never stop being these, they have taken on a new shape. I am no longer bound to a linear, guided path. I am left with many curves, twists, and turns. I have before me no longer one direction but many. It is strange to sit back and realize, wow, I have to be a true adult now.
This may seem strange, or striking given the fact I consider myself already independent and oddly mature for my age. (I have been called on many occasions the "mother" of my group.) But here I am--sitting in my room typing this wondering what life truly is. What does it look like to be an adult? What are the expectations required of me, beyond what I owe the law and government? What does my future hold for me. I find as I search I am ever more presented with what could be. I am stuck in the strange feeling of being able to do what I want but yet feel as though I shouldn't be allowed to have that. Maybe it is because I am so ordered, so controlling, that to have unlimited freedom in career choices, jobs, etc, I am left facing something that has never been cast in front of me.
The world stands before me large, hungry, and needy. I want to answer, I want to know but I don't. I may only be a week out of college but it has already hit me that I can no longer live on auto-pilot, so to speak. I may have been fully present in my college years, I have realized that my life has been molded by routine. It has already been said, probably more times than should be repeated, but it keeps coming back to me: what do I do with myself now? I have time to read but cannot seem to read anything. I play video games but that, in some ways, is a routine I established over the summers waiting for school to start again. I love playing video games, of course, but it is normal. I know this life. I expect it. I understand it. In some ways it is helping me avoid the inevitable future. The future that stares at me like a hunter does to its prey. It is watching but I, the innocent deer, have no true way to escape its sights. So I play my video games, I stare at my wall, I read poetry, I do as I have always done in the hopes life will come and meet me along the way.
I want to grow, I want to be better, I want something but I don't know what. The world has suddenly become rather large--and I--I have shrunk since my shoulders took on the weight of the potential of my world.
The funny thing is that I have been back for a week now but have yet to touch my Livejournal. The reasoning? Three words: Dragon Age Inquisition. It is consuming my life when I am not hanging out with family. All that said, I have been simply enjoying relaxing. Spending time no longer in school, and no longer worrying about returning, is actually a great stress reliever for myself. I haven't felt so--free--in years. Yet, this freedom is strangely suffocating. I have room to breathe, and relax, but at the same time I feel as though I have too much choice. As though, up to this point my life has been already set before me. Get up, go to school, work, homework, work more, get ready for college, study, prepare for the next school year. But suddenly all that ceases. My past twelve years of living, breathing, and digesting school, and its expectations, has left a large, rather daunting gape. I love that I have, in one sense, my liberty, but the question a now free man might ask, and a legitimate question at that, is: what do I do now?
Sure, existing, relaxing, doing all the things I couldn't do before come to mind. I can watch that television show, I can watch that movie, without the guilt. I don't have to study and that is, of course, a great relief. Yet I still feel as though what has ended was what I have known. It was who I was--The Student. I was ever the apprentice, the learner, the seeker of knowledge and truth, and though I will never stop being these, they have taken on a new shape. I am no longer bound to a linear, guided path. I am left with many curves, twists, and turns. I have before me no longer one direction but many. It is strange to sit back and realize, wow, I have to be a true adult now.
This may seem strange, or striking given the fact I consider myself already independent and oddly mature for my age. (I have been called on many occasions the "mother" of my group.) But here I am--sitting in my room typing this wondering what life truly is. What does it look like to be an adult? What are the expectations required of me, beyond what I owe the law and government? What does my future hold for me. I find as I search I am ever more presented with what could be. I am stuck in the strange feeling of being able to do what I want but yet feel as though I shouldn't be allowed to have that. Maybe it is because I am so ordered, so controlling, that to have unlimited freedom in career choices, jobs, etc, I am left facing something that has never been cast in front of me.
The world stands before me large, hungry, and needy. I want to answer, I want to know but I don't. I may only be a week out of college but it has already hit me that I can no longer live on auto-pilot, so to speak. I may have been fully present in my college years, I have realized that my life has been molded by routine. It has already been said, probably more times than should be repeated, but it keeps coming back to me: what do I do with myself now? I have time to read but cannot seem to read anything. I play video games but that, in some ways, is a routine I established over the summers waiting for school to start again. I love playing video games, of course, but it is normal. I know this life. I expect it. I understand it. In some ways it is helping me avoid the inevitable future. The future that stares at me like a hunter does to its prey. It is watching but I, the innocent deer, have no true way to escape its sights. So I play my video games, I stare at my wall, I read poetry, I do as I have always done in the hopes life will come and meet me along the way.
I want to grow, I want to be better, I want something but I don't know what. The world has suddenly become rather large--and I--I have shrunk since my shoulders took on the weight of the potential of my world.