September 14, 2005

• Topic: My distracted mind…preparing for adventure

  
  

  For a while…my life felt like I was driving down a dark, and endless tunnel.  It was the lowest I ever felt.  I had no social life, was living at home virtually devoid of any close friendships, had no job, (then had a job that turned out to be hardly much of a real job at all), and I had no vision for how to get out of this mess of a life. 

  
  

  Despite having had a great social life in college, despite having had an adventurous job in the past, despite having had visions of an super-star future as a visionary writer, a cultural revolutionary, an outdoorsy world traveller, I found myself back at 17.  In the same town, same bedroom, mostly the same social life, the same hope for a better-future-and-a-better-person-to-be.

  
  

  Slowly…glimmers of light have begun to appear.  And, it seems that the path I am looking for is not a new one, it’s just one that I’ve been on but failed to stay on long enough. 

  
  

  A few cultural and practical fears have been riddled into my brain.  The fear of not saving a whopping amount of money for my future and retirement, and the fear of growing older w/out any roots.

  
  

  1) The fear of not saving money, is the fear that tells me I need a constantly growing bank account, and therefor, cannot afford to take more time to simply live abroad w/out any long-term direction.  It is the fear that tells me I’ll never be able to live in a house like the one I grew up in, and may never be able to provide all the luxuries I had growing up.

  
  

  My only response to this fear, is that I really don’t know how to make a lot of money anyways.  I don’t have a path that will allow me to make large sums of money. 

  
  

  2) The fear of growing older w/out any roots…this I sensed when I visited my friends in Chicago, and saw how happy there were, and all their stories and friends there.  And I thought…”I’m missing out on something.” 

  
  

  So…I’m preparing to embrace adventure.  It seems silly that I wake up each day, and while I no longer have any dread for the day, just knowing that my day will be devoid of any adventure, devoid of time w/ my closest friends.

  
  

  I think adventure is probably what I long for most in a job.  That’s probably why the career center in college wasn’t much help.

  
  

  I’m warming up more to the idea of this Uganda trip…which I still have more to learn about.  The only comment I got from someone in my office is, “Don’t go to N. Uganda, they kidnap kids there.”  I know I have a lot to learn about this country if I were to go there, I country that I know 0 about, but…I also don’t want to take-in prejudicial or 3rd hand info about a place from people who have never been there.

  • 10:58 am
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