A story with no endings

Lately, it seems like I've been preparing for the wrong things my entire life. Throughout school, I prepared to become an engineer - learning calculus and physics and technical writing. I prepared to start a family and settle down with 2.5 kids - learning about dating and marriage and children...and even retirement. I observed and I learned. I prepared, and I thought I understood. And then I stepped out of school...stepped out of the observing and preparing. And I learned that I knew nothing about reality. The problems I faced weren't 2-dimensional, with choices A, B, and C. They were excruciatingly complex, full of dynamic variables and unforeseen consequences.

And yet - were I to complain about this fact - I would no doubt be met by a chorus of I-told-you-so's. Because I was warned. "You'll get a nice jolt in the real world - it's nothing like college." "Be prepared for a brutal awakening." "The working world is a whole new place." But what did I do when I was warned? I prepared. Prepared for the wrong things. I prepared to be shocked by the paying of bills, the 9-5 schedule. The grind of unending traffic, no time for meals, God I wish I had gotten to bed earlier, So boss what about a raise? That's what I had heard about the real world, and that's what I prepared for. And now those things are the least of my worries.

But that's life then, isn't it? The biggest curveball it'll throw at you will be from a direction you're not expecting. To be successful, you've at least got to bunt and sprint for first. Is that a crowd-pleasing choice? No. Will the team love you for that single base? Maybe not. But you got there, and you'll have the chance to move on to second. You've made a move in a positive direction.

So what happens (bear with me again with the baseball analogy) when you're sitting on first, and you've got 2 choices for where to go - base 2* or base 2^. Base 2* is your safe bet - it'll take you around to third, and then to home. You'll be successful, and you won't have to think about where you're going. You're not exactly adventurous, but you've made a smart move and taken the safe route. The crowd loves you for it, because you're home. Base 2^, and on the other hand, is a little more out there - the path leading away from 2^ gets lost in a spontaneous fog that's sitting between infield and outfield. But you've always wanted to know what it felt like to run over base 2^ and jump into that fog cloud, full of possibilities, with nothing that's definite.

Ultimately, it's an even tougher choice because you'll most likely be on first again if you take the safe route, and you'll have that same opportunity. Sure, you're a little bit older, a little bit wiser...and you know what? Maybe the maturity that came with your age says to take the safe route again. It's comfortable. And you'll always come back home to the ones you love, and that love you.

That's where I find myself at the moment - at first base (minus the baseball cleats). I bunted my way into Los Angeles, hoping to find success in grad school. Unfortunately, the success was minor and short-lived, now leaving me with the choice of pursuing a career in some city I've fantasized about living in and doing it all on my own, or returning home to my family, my friends, and especially my beloved. Taking the safe route for a while.

The layers of complexity don't stop at the turf, though. Given the state of the economy, simply exploring the country and finding a job in my city of choice is an almost unreachable luxury. Yet the opportunity for a job - any job - goes up as I move closer to home, and closer to friends with connections. And perhaps the heaviest layer, the one so tangled in my heart-strings that it's hard to tell where one starts and another begins (cliché), is that of my beloved. Developing and sustaining a relationship across 2000 miles is incredibly difficult, especially when there's no "we'll be together here" marker in the timeline. I may follow my dream to explore, but in following it I make having a relationship exponentially harder. I may take the safe route to be with the one I love, but I alter and reshape my dreams to explore.

And yet, isn't that how love goes? You meet someone you love, someone you find irresistibly adorable when you watch them sleep, someone who's always on your mind, and you find a way to be together. Dreams get tweaked, plans get shifted, and you compromise. It may not be exactly what you wanted, but it's enough and you're with the love of your life (however short thus far). The compromise is worth it.

So at what point is that sort of compromise supposed to occur in life? Is it when you're madly in love? Is it when you've matured? At 22, I am mature in some areas, incredibly ignorant in others, and overall very confused. There's almost no way I want to give up the tremendous thing I've got going with my beloved, but I'm still markedly attached to my dream to discover and explore the world. Pile on the entire baseball analogy, and a vision of Atlas straining against the weight of the earth starts to form. Mind you, my problems lie a little less heavily on the shoulders, and my right hand isn't slipping into the Indian Ocean (ugh, AGAIN), but I still start to see the similarities.

Over and over, swimming in and out of the complexities, attempting to predict every eddy in the wind caused by the tiny butterfly of my choices, one questions floats to the surface - what should I do? The answer I've heard the most, and one that I'm sure to hear again, is the ol' "fountain of *blank*" response: Hey, don't worry so much, you're young! You've got plenty of time to fly twenty times around the world and get back for tea with the President. That's what your twenties are for!

Everyone who gives me that response, though, always seems to forget they spend half their time looking over their shoulder at a fading youth. Early twenties? God, I miss my college years! Thirties? Man, remember when we used to head the pub after work? Forties and fifties? Look at this picture of Timmy! Life was so good then. We may love our life in the present, but more often than not we still look to our past for some of the good-ol' days, sometimes with regret. And I DO NOT want to look back with regret at my early 20's because I spent that time in some miserable search for the right choice. I may just be impatient, but I want to live out those crazy, amazing, late-night-filled, happy-go-lucky years without the lurking despair that I didn't compromise soon enough or that maybe it wasn't the time to compromise.

In the staggering timeline of life, this problem could be a tiny blink in the complexities yet to come, or it could be a major turning-point. But to me, now - it's real, it's difficult, and it's painful. And goddammit, I didn't prepare for it.