Nothing scares the hell out of me more than the idea of being trapped in
lockstep living. I can't stand knowing that my major may lead me to a life of
repetitive boredom. I quit my old job in childcare to work in a garden and now I've
gone and changed both my major and desired college. I thought I wanted a degree
in Chemistry from UCSD or UCLA, but now I'm all the more focused on a Journalism major at San Francisco State University.
I love to make drastic, life-changing decisions. My senior year, I convinced
myself that I wanted to be a firefighter. I started training myself physically,
looking into classes, and taking practice tests. But soon enough, that concept
slipped right out of my hands when I refused to not go to college. It's been
ingrained in my head by teachers, parents, friends. Everything revolved around
college. I did not apply to any schools, knowing that I would do just fine at a
cheap community college; however, when I visited my girlfriend in her dorm
room and witnessed the experiences I could have had, I immediately regretted not moving away from home.
So I looked into other things. Rock climbing held a brand new appeal to me.
The joy of climbing still is one that I will carry with me until I break my
back doing it. But just last month, I had decided that I was going to take a
year off from school to go on a rock climbing trip from Turkey to Singapore. I
would still love to do that, but $8000 is a lot of money, and the costs are
still going up.
Lockstep living freaks me out so much I may never get married. There are
just too many things I want to do, and too many places I want to go. I want to
go to Europe, I want to climb Everest, I want everything life has to throw at
me. But I want to stay in school.
So now, now I'm changing my major to Journalism from Chemistry in the
fruitless hope of not being bogged down in a one-horse town for the rest of
my life. Into the Wild’s Christopher McCandless had more or less the same
problem as me, so he traveled into the wilderness and forsook a life of comfort
for one of adventure and transcendental living. I, however, will probably stay
in school for a good while so I can have the opportunity to get a good job and money. Because if there is anything I fear just as much as
lockstep, it's failure.
Wow. I can't imagine what my mid-life crisis is going to be like.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
