I overheard a conversation from somebody the other day about how their ten year high school reunion is next year and they wanted to have something to show for it. They wanted to show up and be able to say “hey ten years have passed and I’ve accomplished this and this”, to be able to show off some sort of accomplishment. This made me sit and reflect on the fact that my ten year reunion is coming up as well in another year (Class of 2002 here) and made me think if I had accomplished anything. Do I measure up to what everyone else deems as important to a symbol of status these days? Am I what people now a days consider successful? I don’t really know what to measure these days, but lets look at what is supposed to happen according to that all knowing, all seeing, status symbol we know as pop culture and television.
The norm of said things is to graduate from high school having had a plethora of your firsts and be ready to descend onto the world of college ready to get drunk every day, party all night, and yet still emerge and adult in four years with a degree that will magically get you some sort of high paying job and provide for a future family. Well lets see here according to my clock that would make that “according to plan” I should have graduated in 2006 and be about four years out in the real world pulling in money and doing whatever it is people consider important for a living. I would own a house by now or at very least a nice apartment in some city where business casual is my normal attire and business being the name of the game I make calls often to do so, well depending on whatever it is my career is I suppose.
Career, now that’s in interesting point in question. By now I should be in a job, either the job or job field, that odds are I’ll be spending the rest of my life doing as well as know automatically what choices to make. Again, this according to what society tells me. Not to mention closing in on thirty I should have indeed have begun to set my sights on “settling down” or in other words have met that girl I’ve settled with being with and begun my decent into living a lackluster life from here on out. Is that everything? Did I leave everything out? If anyone fits that mold well then you probably haven’t really lived at all. That’s all utter crap.
There is no mold, there Is no structure, nor certain path. That’s what I’ve learned in the near ten years since high school. I’m sure most people at this point have so its not news to you, but it makes me think and remember that if I try to compare to anything else which is another lesson all in itself: don’t compare yourself to anybody. Everyone leads their own life and hey what they do may or may not work for you. What works for you, works for you, if that makes sense. I dunno, it sounds good in my head.
After graduation I packed up and moved to Idaho about a month after graduation. I went to school for the rest of the year and moved back home now with roughly 24ish credits under my belt. All of the early to mid part of 2003 I worked in various jobs and saved money. I got my first cell phone, which is funny to me seeing that teenagers are practically born with one these days, but remember we had those free brick sized ones that we thought were practical seeing as we were comparing them to the literal brick sized ones of the late 80s. In November I moved to Provo, UT to live in a dormitory as a missionary to prepare to move to Mexico where I spent January of 2004 until November of 2005. There I learned the culture, the language, the way of life, and did some old fashion learning, growing, teaching, helping, serving, and everything that comes with the life of being a missionary. It was fantastic. It had its ups and downs and so many things learned that I couldn’t even begin to explain here, maybe I will at some point, but to me that experience almost trumps anything else I’ve done in the last ten years hands down on its own.
Returning home was a horrible horrible adjustment trying to get re-acquainted with not only the English language, but American culture, and well my own life. Trying to get used to doing things for myself for once. Not fun at all. I worked petty jobs until summer of 2006 where I went back to school until the end of the year and finding that to be frustrating and hey maybe college isn’t for me moved back home before Christmas and set up shop in Conway once again. There I worked more odd jobs and lived and learned lots of things and grew as an individual. I started a band, it was a fun distraction, I went to school off and on at UCA, and then in January of 2009 I returned to the great white north of Idaho to give it one last shot. Surprisingly all the confusion of what to do, where to go, and what should I do with my life slowly started to make sense. Sure there are times when I wish some of that surety would come floating back in, but in the meantime I’m ok with knowing that at least some point I’ve been on the right track. Case in point that year of school I figured out what direction I want to go to for a career, started taking classes in my major that I started to like, got confidence in my Spanish again from not speaking it in so long, and best of all met the girl whom I’m going to spend the rest of my life in. Life has been going pretty much the same since then with little things here and there, but it’s a start anyway.
This all finally started to come together what? Seven years after high school? Had I been going to the “normal social plan” and gone straight through school I’m pretty sure I’d still be sitting on my butt at home trying to figure out what to do with my life. Well yeah I’m kind of doing that now, but what an experience it’s been since then. I’ve learned, understood, and experienced life and I say that’s quite alright. I don’t really remember the point of what I started writing now, but to me that just feels like a validation to myself and anyone else who didn’t quite “fit the norm” and did it their own way. Life works itself out.
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