this is our Beginning, coming to an End.

**preface: I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, but for reasons discussed below, decided not to publish it- but I feel like I can do it now. So here is the first in a series of postings about the crazy state of my life right now.**

Wheels-- Foo Fighters

 

Things are at a pretty exciting point in my life right now. Like a big, crazy things are falling into place kind of exciting. And it's terrifying me.  

Now don't get too excited. It's not one of the exciting life steps I should be making in my old age (i.e. getting a husband...or fiance...or boyfriend...or kitten...or even a fern). 

Instead, I've left my super-safe job (that really, I shouldn't have started again at the beginning of the semester anyway because my two years were up, so it shouldn't be that huge of a deal but still). I'm deflating the air mattress and loading more crap into the storage unit. And I. Am going. On the road. With a band. (!)    

You may or may not know that it's been a dream of mine for a while to be a merch girl.

Randomly, things magically worked out and the opportunity to do so fell into my lap. And so now, like Friday of this week kinda now, I am leaving. I'm going to places I've never been before, and actually following through with a plan that I never thought I would.  

This is the most selfish I've ever been. The majority of the decisions I have made in my life have revolved heavily around what everyone else expected me to do. It has always been more important for me to do what I should as opposed to even thinking about what I really wanted. I could dream outside the little box I had built, but actually stepping outside of that didn't need to happen. It just couldn't. I remember when I started this blog, how nervous I was to share even small bits of my dreams to the people who knew me and thought that I was such a responsible, mature lady who had her life together. My plans have changed a little, but with with first post I opened a door for myself and allowed my mind to seriously consider doing something different. And now, with this decision, I am doing what I want to do. Not what the parents think. Not what the friends think. Not what anyone thinks but me.  

Maybe when I get back I'll be ready to be a grown up. Maybe I'll be ready to apply for an agent job, even if the only one available is in some random Eastern Kentucky county I've never had any desire to live in. Maybe I'll buy a house there with a yard and a front porch, I'll adopt a solid black kitten and name him one of my incredibly clever kitten names (I'm leaning toward Keith Richards. basically ensuring that he'll live forever), and I'll be ready to be a settled adult. And then somehow amidst all this the love part of my life will work itself out as well. (Funny aside- as I was taking a taxi home from getting my hair cut last night because I am transportationless after taking my car home to stay while I'm gone, I had a deep convo with my lady taxi driver about this- she said that once I got back I'd be ready to find my Prince Charming, but once I met him to remain abstinent for at least two years, because that is the only way I would know he was really in the relationship for the right reasons. And then she almost killed me by going in reverse around New Circle. So I don't know how valid anything that lady said actually was.) Maybe then I'll (FINALLY) be the one posting updates on my wedding planning or my babies. Or maybe not. I guess we'll just have to see. Either way, I'm ok with it. I'm working hard on becoming a patient person and  just accepting the fact that I'm on God's time, and he has a plan and I just have to wait. So wait I shall. I plan on updating my blog from the road (FROM THE ROAD?! I love saying that!) or at least filling you in when I get back. Unless, as my family predicts, I am left for dead on the side of the road in Wisconsin. In that case, I guess they were right and I probably should have listened... :)

  

**************Just like with music, I love when a book or essay finds you when you need it most. I was pinteresting the other day and found a Hunter S. Thompson quote that perfectly fit my life right now, and found the essay that it was taken from, and that fit perfectly as well. In a way much better than I ever could, here's exactly how I feel in the words of HST:

Security
by Hunter S. Thompson (1955).

---

Security ... what does this word mean in relation to life as we know it today? For the most part, it means safety and freedom from worry. It is said to be the end that all men strive for; but is security a utopian goal or is it another word for rut?
Let us visualize the secure man; and by this term, I mean a man who has settled for financial and personal security for his goal in life. In general, he is a man who has pushed ambition and initiative aside and settled down, so to speak, in a boring, but safe and comfortable rut for the rest of his life. His future is but an extension of his present, and he accepts it as such with a complacent shrug of his shoulders. His ideas and ideals are those of society in general and he is accepted as a respectable, but average and prosaic man. But is he a man? has he any self-respect or pride in himself? How could he, when he has risked nothing and gained nothing? What does he think when he sees his youthful dreams of adventure, accomplishment, travel and romance buried under the cloak of conformity? How does he feel when he realizes that he has barely tasted the meal of life; when he sees the prison he has made for himself in pursuit of the almighty dollar? If he thinks this is all well and good, fine, but think of the tragedy of a man who has sacrificed his freedom on the altar of security, and wishes he could turn back the hands of time. A man is to be pitied who lacked the courage to accept the challenge of freedom and depart from the cushion of security and see life as it is instead of living it second-hand. Life has by-passed this man and he has watched from a secure place, afraid to seek anything better What has he done except to sit and wait for the tomorrow which never comes?
Turn back the pages of history and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. Security was never theirs, but they lived rather than existed. Where would the world be if all men had sought security and not taken risks or gambled with their lives on the chance that, if they won, life would be different and richer? It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now-familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences.
As an afterthought, it seems hardly proper to write of life without once mentioning happiness; so we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?