Nascent

It's become hackneyed to say that life offers up a path that is decidedly different than the one you might have planned. I grew up wanting to be a doctor. It was my default response for "What I Want to Be" -- and I was so aggressive at getting what I wanted (forgive the immodesty), that I surprised myself when I dropped out of the dream my freshman year of college after "liking the ends" but not being able to endure the means. Or, perhaps, I realized a different path, a different path that was being drawn in front of me, even as I began to take what I thought were purposeful steps. Seven years later, I was unwinding my path to go to graduate school after I couldn't afford to finance it. Those little granules that slip through your fingers...And, a year and a half later, unable to contain the desire to go to that same graduate school (I had shored up a pretty mean credit score in the meantime), I reignited my application, and was again accepted. I intended to bolster myself for the non-profit world, but instead a professor friend of mine suggested that I take accounting - and get a tangible skillset (my english major was helpful in penning letters but a little nebulous). At that exact moment (though unbeknownst to me), sub-prime MBSs were begining their own splintering and unwinding - like the metal spiral rope that frays then pops - shards of metal skewering anything that was around.

And now, I am (luckily) working in finance (an extended internship) - which, in spite of myself or my visions of my "path" - I've come to love. But, I feel on so much unsteady grounding, and I'm still wondering what I should do with the rest of my life.

A few years ago, I drove upstate in my roommate's old diesel Mercedes with my boyfriend who had shattered his ankle and was bed-bound for 6 months. In the cool breathe of the beginning of fall, I drove us back up to the haunting ground of my alma mater. We met one of my best friends and her daughter. I was 25, and I was harping on how I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. My friend and my boyfriend are 14 and 10 years older than I, respectively, and they both looked at me and said they too still wanted an answer to that question.

It makes me think of a family friend who had a beautiful old wooden sailboat. He lived his life in 25 year increments, and the increment that ran in tandem with my childhood was his sailing around the world. I love that idea that I could parse my life's disparate interests out in full ways. It is lush and blossoming in my mind - expansive when I am nestling inside myself and my fears of what I want to be and do.

In honor of that man and my nearing 30th birthday, I want to spend the next year doing all the things I've always talked about -- but haven't had "the time" or "the money" to do. Would you believe one of them is to actually stick with one of these damned blogs? I have about 17 blogs (hyperbole - but still, at least 4) floating around in the Internet ether since 1999...

The biggest problem? My Aries nature is to shoot up fast and bright -- and then loose steam. I'm trying to complete the list today. But, if I can sustain, this should be an interesting next 1000 days.

TODAY:
1.5 flying (working to private pilot's license)
Yinka Shonibare and Judy Chicago at the Brooklyn Museum
El Topo midnight showing