Maybe it's because my friend Tina is awesome. Maybe it's because of my new Flip Video. Maybe it's because at writing club someone gave me an old book called The Travel Writer's Handbook, which I've read three times in the last week. Maybe it's because I have my energy fully back and ready to take off again.... (/random)
Maybe it's because I realized I'm fully halfway through college, (and that's considering that I'm dragging it out an extra year), and that the easy fun times won't last forever. Maybe it's because I've made it a goal to post once a day on my travel blog, and that's bringing me face to face with realities such as targeting audiences and marketability.... (/serious)
Maybe it's because in a very narrow way I can start considering myself published and legitimate - I just won a small but nice sum in a state-level study abroad photography contest, had a tiny picture published in the newspaper of Turku, Finland, and, best of all, wrote my first post on the MU Study Abroad Blog. The blog may be even less lucrative than the photo contest, but hey, it's a paid travel writing gig. I applied, I was chosen, I'm going to a good job and I'll have something (not much, but something) to point at when someone wants to see something I've done... (/yeeps!!)
But I'm suddenly approaching this in a new, more serious, more realistic way. And sometimes it scares me... okay, scratch that. It scares me a lot, period. But sometimes I think I can do it, and sometimes I want to just go straight into teaching instead. So then I close my eyes for a moment, remember that I'm still in University (not too early to try a few things, but too early to say I can't do it :P), that I'm doing a lot of the right things (my degrees all work well, I'm working on my languages, I'm getting in experience traveling, writing, and taking pictures, I'm networking (could do better at this though), I've marked off next summer for an internship of some sort, and I've got tentative ideas about what I could do in the first year or two out of college.)
It's so easy to jump off to either extreme - decide that there's plenty of time and everything will work out fine and go back to sleep, or to freak out and decide I can't do it and run away. Of course it's scary now. Any sort of career or even paying taxes or utilities is scary to me now. Things are scary until you start doing them. I'll advance and the shadows will shrink. What I need to do is stay balanced between the two things - keep the dreams on my mind, so that I can keep moving in the right direction towards reality.
February 13, 2011
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3 comments:
What a wonderfully serendipitous experience it was to run across your blog. Too few people in this world are so insightful, at any age.
I don't think you need any advice from the likes of someone like me, but I did want to chime in with a reminder that I can tell you already know from my short visit to your blog. Though we spend life chasing destination after destination, most of the time is spent on the journey. Therefore it is vital to be sure to enjoy the road that is taking you wherever it is that you are going.
Thank you! I really appreciated that you took the time to leave this comment. And your point about the journey is a good one which, even if I already know it more than some, I never tire of rethinking. College is a launchpad of sorts, and it would be foolish to spend it with my head in the sand... but its also an individual and unique time period in life that deserves its own appreciation... like any other stage of life.
I guess it all goes back into the "happiness is not a destination but a way of life" thing, or the "live in the present" thing. All terrible cliches, but all the time I'm finding that as I go through life I walk headlong into cliches I'd long seen coming and thought I understood, only to find them surprisingly apt and fresh in their own contexts. Cliches of course become so for a reason, right? ;)
Yes, I know what you mean about cliches. Nobody wants to be deemed predictable, nor dwell on the obvious, but there are certain truths in this world that resonate throughout our existence.
Certain people I have encountered just seem to be more aware of these truths on a deeper level. It is almost as if we are old souls in a world awash with the new (perhaps I am being vainglorious to include myself in the "we").
Anyways, I'm not sure if that really makes much since in this forum. Technology is a wonderful tool for enabling world wide communication, but it often fails miserably compared to good conversation over a cup of coffee.
I look forward to stopping in from time to time to see how your journey is progressing.
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