What's Your Point...

You know, everyone I know is fighting to get back what they had. I'm fighting because I don't know how to do anything else. -Starbuck, BSG



I've been thinking a bit about my future. I do this a lot but it's mostly during a bit of drinking or something randomly good happens to someone I know and I experience a liminal moment. But lately I've been thinking about my path and the choices I've made and the choices I'm going to make. Particularly, I've been comparing my decisions against those of my close friends.

I really believe you shouldn't measure yourself against the yardstick of others but as you grow older and the people around you are moving ahead with what they want to do it becomes inevitable to compare yourself to them. I'm personally blessed/cursed with successful and focused friends. They have their idea of a future pretty well mapped out in their heads. They know what they want as far as career paths and what they love to do. They are married/engaged/in serious relationships/not emotionally stunted. They are moving in a direction.

Me? Not so much.

I've never been much of a planner. My goals have always been vague at best. I mean, I know I want to write novels and I think it would be nice to have someone to share a future with. But ask me how to get there or what I would do if I even got there....Shit, you got me.

It's that I don't want to be that kind of focused individual. I REALLY do. I just often think I have an incomplete set of tools to accomplish that. It infuriates me at points and I'm sure it must annoy the people around me. I imagine that they are looking at me like I disappointed them and maybe the world. I'm not that little kid who was smarter than the rest and wanted to do everything. Hell, I'm not even that dumb teenager/20-something who lived fearlessly and just DID stuff. I think something inside me went to sleep and I need to wake it up because at this point I'm just going through the motions of aging and living. I encounter a problem and deal with it but not with that hopeful reckless abandon I used to.

I mean look at that kid's crazy face.

I need to get that back. Or else I become Starbuck level screwed-up and I DO NOT want that. I don't think anyone does.