I must be honest. I'm going through such a transitional phase of my life right now. Actually. My life has been non-stop evolving and change for the last decade with lots of transitions. But it's especially transitional right now as I wrap up school and move on to what's next. I'm all but done with my bachelor's degree and now Jared and I are trying to figure out what's next. Where to live. How to live. What we want. Where we're willing to compromise to help each other's pursuits. How to make both our goals into reality. My disposition is already that I'm rather preoccupied with the future, but this transition is much exacerbating it and my husband is handling it wonderfully, I might add.
Some people don't seem too troubled by devoting their entire life to only one or two big goals. Actually, I think that's most people. Sure, they might casually wonder about what their life would be like if things hadn't gone in such a way, but most people, I think, want only a few things. Precisely because I am not one of those people, I'm realizing I must be quite choosy about to what I devote myself, and to where I spend my time and money. But that is difficult when my wants and my desires are so polarized, so mutually exclusive.
Wanting a home, wanting to be a wandering nomad, wanting to invest in a community and set down roots, wanting to move across the world, wanting to live by my mom, wanting my husband to be able to go to school, wanting to spend my life with my husband, wanting to travel, wanting to travel solo for years at a time, wanting to be a grandparent one day, not wanting kids really, sometimes wanting kids kind of, wanting to start a business, wanting to spend my days in nature and back to the land, wanting to spend my days working hard in a studio, wanting so many conflicting things. I realize I have only one life, only 24 hours each day, and only so much money, and sometimes I feel it is imperative that I find out what will truly make me the happiest and go after only those specified results.
BUT sometimes you just can't theorize and quantify everything, and the truth about the universe we live in is that no one can predict the future accurately every time. Sometimes I wonder if the life that will make me the happiest is one I will never live, with people I would never deliberately build relationships with, doing things I would never choose to do. I think sometimes you just have to pick a pursuit, unsure it will grant you the most happiness and the least regrets, and pursue it with everything you got. Sometimes you just have to get started doing something, because doing something is better than nothing at all. Because we live in the third dimension, and sometimes my thoughts and fears and concerns and desires may only come to pass in another.
Here are just a few of the questions I've been asking myself, pondering, brainstorming, and journaling over: Where do I want to be a year from now? In ten years, what do I want to look back and say, "I built that."? If I were on vacation right now, where would I wish I could come home to--where do I wish was home? When I'm old, what do I want the story of my life to have been? Even with all the evolving and transformative changes in the last few years, who have I always been? What hasn't changed? In the last ten years, what have I always loved? What in my childhood sparked flutters in my stomach? Which of those things still spark flutters today? These are just a few questions, there are of course many more questions and ideas and lists and long, drawn out hand written journal entries.
I remind myself this is a phase that will last only a season, and one day I will miss this free time, I will miss this freshness, this feeling of new opportunities and the endless horizon, and maybe even the stress, the frantic planning, and the quiet quiet quiet of my home. But for now, I'm standing tall, confident, and courageous, and I'm looking straight into the future.
And this post, and all that it entails, will be but a moment, and I will look back endearingly, at all my growth, and hopefully continual nonstop change, with hearts in my eyes.
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