Sunday, April 20, 2008

Life without decisions

I've avoided blogging just because I feel like I have nothing to talk about. Which is silly because life is life. I go out. I stay in. I work late. I go home early and nap. I visit friends in other cities. They visit me. I make new friends. I keep the old. (question: Which is silver and which is gold? I imagine that old friends are gold since they're a known commoditiy and new friends are silver since you really know nothing about them.)

So yes, life is happening. But much like Anna Karenina (or at least the way Prof. Gary Morson described it) real change happens gradually and I don't have any high highs or low lows to share.

And I kind of love it. I love that I don't have to look for a new job or a new apartment or move to a new city any time soon. That I don't have to agonize over any decision that's going to affect my life, though I am conscious that every decision I make or don't make will affect my life in unexpected ways later on, but, hey, that's my journey.

I love that after years of stressing over colleges and apartments and roommates and internships and classes I'm able to hold still for a while and just enjoy and build on the life I'm creating for myself. Yeah, I'm sure in a couple years I'll grow bored of my job or apartment or my life and will want to make some changes and will have to make decisions and will possibly go through a quarter-life crisis, but that doesn't matter right now, because I'm not currently at that place. Right now my biggest project is picking out a new bed and my biggest decision is if I should dye my hair red (think how Drew Barrymore does it...I'm open to your feedback, fyi).

A couple weeks ago a Medill freshman who also went to Ossining and I want to be her mentor messaged me asking the typical questions type-A Medill freshmen ask. "If I don't do this internship will it put me at a disadvantage the rest of my life?"-type deal. And I tried to respond appropriately, both giving her the advice I wish I had gotten that would have maybe helped me succeed, while at the same time stressing the fact that 94% of the stuff I spent way too much energy stressing out is so irrelevant and you don't know where life will lead you and most decisions aren't right or wrong.

I'm sure she won't listen. I'm sure I wouldn't have listened to myself. But now that I am where I am and in a pretty happy place I realize I spent way too much energy being stressed about decisions. And I'm sure when I have to make more decisions I will stress about those as well even though they will not be as important as I think they will be at the time. But for now I am totally ok with living in the moment as much as I know how which isn't very much, but I'm trying.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home