i just think we should try. can we try?

as i sit here eating raspberry white chocolate hugs monica left in our theatre room, im thinking about jobs. about life. dreams and the like, and the transistion from youth to adulthood, which im convinced happens in periodic spurts throughout your life, in small moments and nudges: when you fail a test in college and realize your self esteem no longer solely relies on getting an A, when you no longer have health insurance in your daddys name, when you learn that love is when you dont get what you wanted and dont remind the other person you didnt get what you wanted even though you are dying for SOMEONE, ANYONE, to know of your supreme sacrifice, when you work all day long everyday and no longer have the freedom of midday gas station trips for sodie or a casual target browse or a pretend study session in the library, when you start being on time or at least not ridiculously late, when you start making decisions without consulting 89 other people (although you still google the answers to make sure phantom internet people agree with you), when you cry and don't tell anyone about it, when you bring baked goods anywhere (maybe some people have done that the duration of their life, but i didnt know how to operate an oven until i was 23 years of age). sometimes i feel like a full-blown adult, although i know the growing spurts will continue, little nudges leading me to self-actualization, or at least something like it. my mom used to say being an adult is returning the shopping cart to the RETURN SHOPPING CART HERE places in the parking lot (she cried when my sister did that for the first time without being told). i do that these days, but if i decide not to buy an item i still leave it in the nearest aisle. which makes me think, maturing is still in process, which in some small way, makes me relieved. i dont think im ready for self actualization.

anyway, now that i am an adult-in-embryo i feel that i have refined my life philosophy a little bit. i realize now that in my youth my ideas could be infantile and fantasy, not always connected to the reality that is necessitated by taking care of yourself. but it brings me joy to realize that my philosophy has not fundamentally changed with age and hasnt become entirely jaded by the reality of a paycheck and "adult stuff" for lack of a better term, but just tweaked to fit the realness of adultdom that i was not familiar with before. and even though i am surrounded in a chorus of "i hate my jobs" and "thats being an adult," i think it is possible to live a life you love. i emphatically believe you can. and i am confident i will.

the majority of people i know hate their jobs. some hate where they live, some hate how much they weigh, some hate the people they associate with or their hair or their shyness or their inability to cook or whatever it is they hate. there are some things you cant control, and i realize that. i also realize there is a responsibility that comes with adulthood, and i gladly accept it. i would work a job i hate if that was the only way to feed my children. i would. im not arguing that sometimes life necessitates certain actions and im grateful for people that prioritize. but i think, for the most part, you can love most things in your life and "i have to" can be a shield. that may be offensive and i dont know every situation and i would never judge yours. but i do it, parading excuses left and right for why i cant possibly follow my dreams, but most of the excuses are flimsy and hollow, a weak euphemism for "im scared".

and once you throw those bad boys out the window and try, youre on your way. and one day, one glorious day, you really may be who you want to be living the life you always wanted, the person you dreamed of when you were small with big ideas. i think that taking control and choosing what you want and then going after it with your heart and soul, whatever it is, doing everything within your power to get it, is maybe an integral part of being a real and important being in the universe. i know it is scary. it makes my pits sweat. it is not always fun, and sometimes it results in you crying your eyes out because someone said you couldnt do it. this has happened to me more times than i can count on both hands. but i am glad for those times, because i think it means i reached out of my comfort circle and tried: tried really, really hard. which is really kind of the best part about being a human being and not just an instinctive animal.

trying leads to the good stuff, or so im told. maybe i have just seen too many movies like rudy and miracle and D2 and almost famous. sometimes it boggles my mind that i only have one life. you mean i dont get to do this over? what? are you sure? sometimes i think we forget this in the day to days, and we just go through the motions and do what we can to scrape by. and i think that is okay sometimes, because sometimes thats all you can do. but if dr seuss and mother theresa and johnny appleseed and martin luther king jr and george washington and emilio estevez can do something profound for the world and not just scrape by, i think i can too. i do. and i think that i must, and you must, because this is all we have. these 59 or 80 or 32 years or however long we have to make some footprints.

you can argue you dont want to do anything big. i may or may not believe you, because i think as a little kid you probably said you wanted to be president or a doctor or a firefighter or whatever, and i think you meant it. and that might not be your dream anymore, but i think you still dream, cause i do. and i think you still want to live a life you love, but you may be afraid to reach out of that comfortable little zone youve created over the past however many years where you know where everything is and how things are going to go. i love my zone, but i want to love my life more, and that requires reaching and stepping out and putting myself out ready to get thrown to the lions by employers saying no, teachers saying i cant do it, boys rejecting my love. nick and i were looking at statistics today on getting jobs and the percentage of people that acquire jobs through applying online is 7%. the percentage of people who acquire jobs through walking into a business and asking for an interview is 68%. i think that statistic says it all. lets leave the glow of the computer screen and get out there, because apparently the success rate of really trying and doing scary things is much, much higher.

hopefully my thoughts have not gotten lost in a sea of adjectives and repetition. im just excited to live my one little life as best and as big as i know how. im excited to try. im excited to fail, because that means im stretching and growing, trying to do something that matters. im excited to live a life i love. im excited for nick to live a life he loves. im excited to do big and scary things together. and im excited for you to live a life you love too, because life is just a lot of days piled up on top of each other, and then its over like that. done, finito, which i dont think my peon of a brain can really understand. but lets hope when we all leave this green earth for some other beautiful place our feet have left our comfort zone more than once in a while, and from somewhere far away we can see our footprints all over the place, zigzaggy patterns to all those scary forests and hills and oceans, a life in which we tried really hard, and a life which we truly loved.