Day 2

Day 2: Where you'd like to be in 10 years.

   What mom thought up this dreary prompt? I'll try to keep it interesting.
   The biggest problem with this writing prompt is that I haven't the slightest idea of where to begin. The "quarter-life crisis" that I am continually referring to is exactly the problem that I don't know what to do with my life. I don't know nearly as much about myself as I should in order to determine where I would like to be in ten years. I'll be 26. That's fairly young and I'll still be slightly stupid (but steadily growing out of my idiocy). By then, I hope I'm not married. Heaven help us all if I end up with a husband at that age. I'd like to be educated a lot more than I am right now. No one likes incompetent adults. I would like to do something that I'm good at and that I enjoy. As far as career options go, I'm beyond clueless. There are so many things that sound interesting, but none seem so interesting that I'd want to study it for four years and then make a career out of it. To be honest, I keep getting the creeping suspicion that I want to be a teacher. There isn't another occupation for which I have a higher respect, but imagining myself as an educator is a terrifying thought. Perhaps the reason I'm afraid of teaching is because I respect and value my teachers so much. I worry that I wouldn't be able to do anything close to what they've done or have nearly the same influence.
    Also, I hope I'm not bald or dead.

P.S. I hope you'll forgive me, friends. I was gone all day yesterday and couldn't post in time. Strike one and it's only the second post of the 30 day challenge. I'll be gone all day tomorrow, too. Oh dear. Wish me luck, kids. Wish me luck.

And just when I thought I'd lost it...

   As you may or may not have heard from a previous post or my actual self; the past few months I've been locked and trapped in what I like to refer to as my "quarter-life crisis". You have to give it props, this pesky little problem of mine. It has managed to linger longer than the remorse of any reprehensible action, embed itself into the brain deeper than anything in memory (regardless of its positive or negative connotation), and excavate the very core of passion and self-respect leaving it empty, confusing, and pointless to reconstruct. I haven't the slightest idea regarding what exactly to do about my existential predicament, but I have discovered a crucial aspect that could in fact pull me out of this to a certain degree.
   I haven't been reading.
   I can't pin point exactly why I lost the motivation to read in the first place, but as we all know, no well-read person can ever hope to be a writer, or at least a good writer. I'd been fumbling with the idea that maybe by reading again, I'd start writing again, and eventually the brutality of my mid-mid-life emergency would lighten up. Whether or not my plan is working is nearly impossible to say. The only firm conclusion I can extract from my recently started project is that I have come to realize how much I missed reading. I wish I would have decided to not be lazy, sit down with a book, and at least try to focus for a small amount of time. Oh, how I've missed my imaginary conversations with Wells, Steinbeck, Tolstoy, Poe, Dickinson, and countless other literary geniuses! And just when I thought I'd lost it...I fell in love with literature all over again.
   This could be a turning point, folks.

Quarter-life Crisis

Oh, look at what I've stumbled upon. A rusted Internet link and works left to collect viral dust under a mess of cyber cobwebs. I would apologize and tell you how sorry I am for neglecting the compilation of accumulated thoughts, but that would defeat the purpose of writing, now wouldn't it? See, the best part of writing is that it's a self-evaluated piece of art. I'm not here for my audience, not matter its members. I'm here for me. And lately, I have been getting bothered by the audience to pick up this blog again, so for my sake, I'm writing. It's not for you, let's just clear that up right now.

I left off two months ago (during what I now understand to be the roots of my quarter-life crisis), feeling somewhat defeated, for no reason in particular. I said that it was time for a change, that I'd work on things, that I'd rediscover myself in the woods, that I would come back in time, and that I would be back in full swing.

Truth be told, I lied. As much as it would please me to tell the few of you who are still with me that I'm back in full swing, I'm not. And, as much as I wish that my current state of writer's block, mild illness, emotional instability, and exaggerated cynicism would deteriorate to nothing, it won't.

I'm in a kind of mid-life crisis, though I'm not midway through life. I suppose you could say I'm in more of a quarter-life crisis? Regardless of the specifics of this crisis...I'm still in a crisis! And that's the problem. The few anchors to sanity that I had left are slowly leaving me. Before my quarter-life crisis, I had writing, music, and debate. Now it feels like I only have debate. I can't write (obviously), everything that I try to create is appallingly synthetic or overly raw. So, I stopped writing. Music has always been more of a fallback to a fallback. If I couldn't write, I'd pick up the guitar. I can't play guitar anymore, as it would turn out. I've never viewed an instrument with such frustration. I know full well that it's an instrument of beautiful capabilities and when I can't pull that out, I get extremely angry and want to throw my fist through a wall. So, I stopped playing. And then there's debate. Despite the emotional turmoils, drama, excitement, and heartbreak that go into debate, it's the only consistent activity that I have left. Unless the whole world wants to fall to hell, I'm preserving it.

I don't know what else to say, though there's a lot left unsaid. Have you ever been in one of those moods when you just want to curl up with some chocolate or maybe a pint of ice cream and watch sad movies all night? I did that last night. I fell asleep to the Last Song. I didn't have chocolate or ice cream though. I didn't cry either. I'll work on that.


Now what?

Whit happens