Complications

What do I want to do? As if deciding what college to go to, what major to study, what to do with my spare time in this four years weren't hard enough decisions...

I have been out of college for a 16 months now and it really wasn't until now that the true actuality of graduation hit me. In all honest, I have been focused merely on the here and now these past 16 months. The internship in the Dominican Republic was an almost last minute thing. As was Ghana. I then sort of fell back into work at a local farm until chance had it I came across a temp job with a regulatory agency. Time has finally slowed down for me, and for the first time in 5 years I have had the same lifestyle and consistency for more than 3 months. Crazy huh?

But that consistency has slowly begun to bother me. Because now I am able to look further and see what lies ahead. Before, I certainly made choices, but it was as if the choices were just 60-70 different railroad tracks I could have dicerned between. Now, rather than tracks, it is as if I have nothing but a wide open field that rolls into mountains, valleys, beaches, oceans, and more. I can do anything I want. I can make a choice and it is my own. I have never had such independence before. and it honestly excites me more than anything. Granted I am sitting here overwhelmed with trying to begin to piece together a plan for my life. And I think perhaps the most exhilarating thing of all is that there really isn't a plan. My life up until the age of 18 was careful calculations. I did the ordinary, I blended in, and I succeeded at what I did, even if what I did was casual and of the norm. Suddenly I turned 18, and to say the least, in the last four years I have toured all of Europe, lived in the Dominican Republic, devoted an entire summer to a house of prayer, visited Africa, and made good friends in Holland. None of that could be planned. It happened with precision and thought, but it most certainly was not planned. And so what is exciting about this place in my life is just how open I have become to doing something different. Something outside the norm. Traveling somewhere. Pushing myself into difficult situations, struggling with hardships that don't involve life here in the US. Learning new languages. Eating new foods. Finding loneliness and ending up finding happiness out of loneliness by meeting new people. Exploring new ideas and theories.


And all of this, a wealth of opportunity, a dichotomy of change, and power of tranformation right in front of me. Confusing? Yes, the potential for all of this in so many differnt possibilities is certainly overwhelming and confusing. But it is exciting. It is something I can look forward to. Because in all honesty, I hate my job right now. Not because of the job itself. But because of the mundanity, the repetition, the familiarity. I thought I'd never say this, but I thrive in different. In complexity. In strangeness. It is where I belong. And so it is where I will go. Out into that field of opportunity, with no set tacks, just openness begging for a new way to be forged. And one that is all my own.