Life's Pupil

As always, I am less than exemplary with the consistency of my blog. I always plan on writing every day, or at the very least, twice a week. And yet somehow, I inevitably get lazy or tired and my track record remains less than perfect.

I find myself at an impasse. As a graduated college student, you could not make the case that I am comfortable money wise. On the contrary, I have negative dollars. Because really, that’s what debt is, it is the opposite of income. Since I spent money I did not have, now I have negative dollars to my name. If someone were to just mess with the paperwork and lose the negative sign, I’d have a pretty little next egg to my name. I’ll keep hoping that my debt resolves itself, but in the meantime I suppose I should work and try to get myself out of debt.

Here in lies the difficulty: being a college student means no experience, no experience means no job, no job means less money than debt, less money than debt means no home, no home means no where to study, means no way to get experience, means not job… If you muddled through that, I apologize. Yet there is the impasse! Of course my thinking takes me to the place where “if only” becomes a dangerous recurrence. If only I had a job I could afford an apartment. If only I had an apartment I would work out everyday. Somehow I don’t think its that simple…

This is the cross roads. I am done with college. Even if I were to go back to school, it would be different. It would be much harder course work and the intention would be to finish so I could get a better job. This is the point of no return. From this time onward I will forever be an adult! No turning back now… Unless I chose a career in video game testing, and then I suppose I could pretend to be a kid still. But I’m straying from the point.

When I look at the next few years of my life, scattered precariously with a career, marriage, traveling, possibly more school, it occurs to me that I am done with the comfortable part of life. Gone are the days when I got to think of number 1 first. Now number 1 is number 2 and number 2 is number uno. My fiancé is now the most important person in my life and his needs come before mine, and visa versa. Now I’m not doing things for my own good, but for the good of Us as a team. This is a huge transition! I’m thrilled about it and can’t wait to take the next giant leap in our relationship. But it is a huge adjustment nonetheless.

Between the adjustments of graduating, getting soon thereafter engaged, and starting my adult life for real, I am feeling lost in transition. I am reminded that humans are creatures of change. We are made to change. Our very bodies are not the same from one day to the next as ours cells regenerated at a rapid speed. Change is good and normal. And not likely to go away anytime soon. Things in college changed, yes. But there was somehow a unifying factor of school. I find myself suddenly floundering about without a unifying factor. I grasp desparately at anything that will identify me with another human. Even now, I am sitting next to a man in the coffee shop who is also typing away madly, and I feel somehow identified with him simply because we are doing the same thing. That’s why people get married after college… Because they are seeking an identity. This is certainly not a bad thing. I think everyone needs an identity. Still, that identity is unquestionably going to change.

The question that is forefront in my mind, among all the other questions crowding their way in, is this: does being an adult mean being in a constant stage of transition? I mentioned the next couple of years in my life… But what about after that? Once kids come along, every day is going to be a transition.

Being humans means being at odds with nature. Even though it is easier to stomp my feet and try not to be taught by transition, it is not going to do me any good. It might be the natural response, but the response that I will grow from is that of a student. Pardon the cliché, but we really are all students of life. And the funny thing about life is that it teaches us whether we want it to or not. And whether it feels like it is or not!

Sitting at Peet’s Coffee, bored out of my mind with no job, no home, no dance, life is inevitably teaching me. I am learning, as always, to thrive in transition, to embrace the process of job hunting, to sit quietly with myself and enjoy all the work I can get done now, like writing, choreographing, aimlessly surfing the internet, that I won’t be able to leisurely do when I’m busy with a job, husband, household, and life. The key is to roll with the punches and to literally embrace whatever life throws at you.