This should relate to maturity
Random Observation/Comment #127: I definitely caught the travel bug. I have all of the symptoms, including the ones on the most severe level. Luckily, the cure for this is on its way. My brain is slowly decaying backwards and I’m losing concentration on the more important parts of my life. It’s time to be a little selfish. It’s time to leave it all behind for a little while.
It may seem like I’m approaching my life backwards because I’m taking a vacation before I even start work, but it is simply planning ahead to enjoy what will inevitably happen – a crash, a clang, a burst, or a simple foamy overflow. A “mid-life crisis” would be looking a little too far ahead, but I’m actually preparing myself for those intermediate intervals between the “quarter-life crisis” and “reaching the hump” years – those unpredictable gremlins knock you over the head with a club when you least expect it. It’s the point in your life where responsibility has yet to completely settle into your brain. You’re still living at home to save money and significant others aren’t very significant for long. It’s a time when a part of you still wishes you were in college and spending those all-nighters drinking red bulls and working to meet the next deadline – wait, that’s not it. I meant normal college with sex, alcohol, drugs, weeds*, and temptation around every corner.
It seems to be a bit of a depressive state when time just passes you by so much more quickly. You remember when you could finish all your homework and still sneak in hours of cartoons on a high school schedule. But now, you see yourself slowly fade in productivity, even if you have a full day to finish one thing. Granted, your tasks have become much larger, but there’s still that side of you that accepts pushing off the task to the next day – not like there’s much to look forward to. It’s not exactly procrastination; it’s more like a bed sheet of deception you cover yourself with as you try to hide from your responsibilities by pretending to be a transparent ghost. It feels like there could be so much more you could do with your life, but instead of actually doing something, you find distractions and consuming easier. There’s a lingering image of your life following a mindless zombie stumbling through your weekdays and drunken mindless zombie stumbling through the weekends. You start to question, “What is fun?” Is getting drunk and spending obscene amounts of money for a night where you wake up with a hangover and desperately want more hours in the day, considered fun? Am I having fun yet?
Ever since my ex-roommate said this quote, I’ve believed it with all my heart. “Time enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.” There are some exceptions, like watching prime time action television when you should actually be working on an hour presentation you have in three days, but in its essence, the quote expresses a perspective on life. “Wasting time” is really dependent on what you keep as a priority. If your priority is to have fun and travel, then isn’t the work you do every day just wasting time? Would you consider it wasting time if the time is used to help your overall priority? For example, would you disagree with the act of saving up money to travel a wasted time because it’s a conditional statement? If so, then wouldn’t what you do with your free time (supposedly enjoyed) be conditional to your happiness? Yes, you’ll be miserable when you’re catching up with what needed to have been completed to reach your long term aspirations, but didn’t that moment just add something to your persona? Were you not enlightened a little bit or didn’t you learn something? So is there wasted time? I guess it’s only wasted if you had to do something else and you somehow replaced that shitty task with an even more shitty one. Thus, it’s only not wasted time if you’ve enjoyed it. I think I confused myself…
I can already predict the transformation and it scares the crap out of me. Sitting in front of a computer screen for ten hours and constantly polishing your boss’ shoes is just a part of the process; it’s just the way things go. Isn’t there so much to look forward to? A higher salary is better than my current negative one. Social security – great, until you lose 30% of your 401k over blatantly dishonest business (I don’t know what world I was living in to think there would be any other type of business). But where has all of the time gone? When can you celebrate those birthdays of your close friends, parents, sons, and daughters if they fall on weekdays? Where is all of that money actually going?
Let’s say I’m doing the job-thing to pay off loans and save up money to support my expensive lifestyle. The question I would ask myself before getting myself into this position would be “why am I planning to spend the money and live my life when I’m old or older?” I am healthy, relatively attractive, and sexually active now. If all you see ahead is that wonderful retirement stage, where you can sit back and measure the tree rings of the seeds you’ve planted, why not make those memories now? If your retirement savings are for traveling, why not take out more loans and leave it all behind – escape? I understand the responsibilities of many, but if you had the chance, it wouldn’t really make sense not to take it. Financially, I will repay my parents – they already supported me this long, what’s another 6 months? With regards to the timing, the Euro is down and sales are plentiful now that our economy is slowly recovering. The planets seem to be aligning for me. I think I’m waiting for Time to point me in the right direction; it doesn’t have to be an arrow – just highlight the door frames or simply show me the alternate futures. Please?
Of course, I will take the opportunity because it’s awesome-in-a-nicely-wrapped-box. I would be stupid not to take the offer. So then what is this thought bubble that fizzles back into existence whenever this topic comes up? It casts a shadow over me and bellows this word in the deepest bass that orchestrates my heartbeat – “Maturity.” To me, it’s like a torch where the whole stick is covered with the cloth and gasoline – I guess it’s just a burning rag in the shape of a stick that leads the way, but constantly keeps me in pain. I see its beautiful glow giving me so much to look forward to. The walls of my dark, metaphorical cave are covered in scriptures that preach the meaning of life. I see the importance of family and the happiness of that path. With that said, I also see the hair-pulling frustration when you think everything your teenage child says is an imaginative fabrication to please your expectations. But, on the brighter side, they strengthen your bonds and give a deeper meaning to life. This soul adds purpose to your own. This love extends your goals, aspirations, dreams, and fantasies blog entry to include that of your child and lover.
I can’t wait, but I see that this is later down my path. Now is the time to rejoice in youth. Commitment will just have to wait. Let me enjoy the silence by making my own “bumpin’ beats.”
~See Lemons Mature?
