Thoughts on the year ahead.

Today I'm very aware that I'm at the start of a new age, and though I don't know what lies ahead of me, I'm determined to move forward into whatever mystery awaits. Since I last posted here, I've gotten my driver's license and turned twenty-one: two more milestones on the road to full adulthood. I'm now an adult in most of the ways that are easily measurable: physically, legally, academically (with a high school diploma and a few years of college under my belt). As I see it, all that remains is to become financially independant; once that's taken care of, all the social, emotional and spiritual aspects of adulthood - the things that aren't easily measurable - will likely fall into place.

But what gives me such a sense of anticipation about the coming months isn't so much what I have achieved recently as what I must necessarily achieve in the next year. This will be my last semester as a full-time student, and come Summer I hope to have an internship with SCA which may take me away from home for several months - potentially well into Autumn. In the event that this falls through, I may decide to travel for several months anyway.

By the time I return in Fall or early Winter, I don't know what options may be available to me, but as I said earlier, I won't be a full-time student anymore. One possibility is that I will work full-time while working toward an Associates of Science degree part-time. I feel very good about the prospect of only going to school part-time for a few reasons; because of the pressure I've felt to take enough credits to be full-time, I've had to deal with very awkward class schedules and unnecessary electives that cut deeply into my time to follow other pursuits, including employment. Hopefully, with the weight of tuition off of my budget and better employment prospects, I could end up living on my own as soon as next Winter.

These are not "hopeful" plans, not take-it-or-leave-it. I'm determined to push myself out of the nest and see whether I can survive whatever world I find myself tumbling into; if I fail, it won't be to return to my current status as unemployed college student living under my parents' roof. Ready or not, I can't stay another year - and I am afraid that I might not be ready, but more afraid of never giving myself the chance to find out.

In the mean time, I have the next four months or so to take care of other things. "Other things" includes my various creative projects, the foremost of which are a comic book project and a novel project; I'm hoping to have the novel done by the end of the semester. I'm also working on occupying my time. At the moment setting aside the search for paid employment, I'm becoming a volunteer worker in the Metroparks (the Cleveland area's park system). And, of course, there's school. But there's also the matter of making peace with leaving my entire social network, if only for a portion of the year. I have come to feel almost a sense of responsibility toward my friends and family in the area, and part of me feels like traveling for extended periods of time would amount to an abandonment. Intellectually, I know that I must live my own life while maintaining my connections to others, and that I can potentially form as much of a strong community with others that I meet along the way. But there is a strong sense of loss associated with growth. I can only hope that the growing plant doesn't mourn its seed casing too much, as it leaves the safety of the ground to face the cold world above.