March Forth

Photo by Jackie Cotton

Today is the last day of March.

2016 is already 1/4 of the way over.

I'll be 23 in three short months.

With all this looking ahead, I need to stop, take stock, and be thankful where I am.

I'm functioning perfectly fine as an adult. I'm paying my bills on time, I'm devoting attention to my closest friends, and I'm balancing a need for peace and quiet with my desire to be out and about with people all the time.

The ambivert struggle is real, y'all.

I'm exploring exciting opportunities for the future (can you say "grad school?") and thoughtfully and intentionally trying to decide what path is the wisest. Meanwhile, I'm blessed with a job that pays me enough to live comfortably while saving up for the future.

But let's be real: I have a hard time being thankful for those things. When things are good on the homefront, I get an urge to gooooooo somewhere. Not long term, of course. Just a vacation.

The day-to-day adult life gets very boring, very quickly. I enjoy having a routine, but I like to be able to change that routine up on a dime, and a desk job really doesn't give you room to do that. Without the ability to say "nah, I'm going to work on this from 8-11 pm instead of this morning," I lose a bit of freedom. And day after day of losing that freedom feels very constraining and makes me want to swing the pendulum from being stuck in an office all day to doing some extreme travel.

I'm dreaming about taking a 4,000 mile road trip looping through the southwest and northwest, touching ten different states and finally getting to go to Canada. It'd be by myself because I'm craving a lot of alone time right now.

I don't know if it will actually happen, though. I'd also really like to go to Chicago/New York with my friend Jackie when she goes back home after graduation and then moves to NYC.

I also really want to go on a cruise to Cuba, but gosh--that's a really expensive dream.

There's a lot I want to do, and I know I can't do it all. I'm incredibly grateful for where I am and what I'm doing, but being cooped up in an office is grating on my soul and I really just want to go.