What's Eating Laurissa Luanne? Wouldn't be a bad name for a sequel to Peter Hessel's What's Eating Gilbert Grape. And here's why, I think: I have no idea where I am headed.
Of course, my goal is first to find a job, and that's a milestone by leaps and bounds. I haven't had a real job for....well....never. I have never had a "real" job, one that I have worked with from year to year and pulled in forty hours a week. But then I think about it further, and I realize, okay it is only a job. And then what? I find an apartment. I find a church. I meet more new people. Again. (Stressful. If you didn't know already, meeting new people is stressful for me). I find a good running route. I set up my bookshelf. I buy a used couch; I buy used everything. I eat cheap. I call home once a week. I visit some friends. I go to a bazillion weddings. I watch the news at night. I read a little. I lesson plan and lesson plan and lesson plan. I continue to write more blogs about the simple everyday life I live and observe. I do all these little things, and I do them because it doesn't take a whole lot to develop a routine and to be who you always were. But when do the big things happen?
Some days I think I'm years behind my developmental level--a developmental level measured in big things. Some days I'm 40, with a developmental level measured by little things. And I have to gauge myself because I have no idea how 22-year-olds ought to act. Or maybe I do, and the fact that I don't understand it all shows that I am truly 22.
I need to get going--do something big for a change. I could say this harshly, and I think I will. I am going crazy in my comfort.
I take a look at the life patterns of those before me, and I ask two major questions: 1) Does life happen to a person? 2) Does a person make life happen? If at my age I were to have lived in the 1930s and 40s like Great Grandma Fannie Ham, my life would have been planned out before me. It seems like everything happened clear out of the blue for her. I suppose if one rule was that by 22 you ought to have been married, those plans would fall in your lap, too. Great Grandma Fannie Ham was married by 22. Grandma was married by 21 (but she was more of a go-getter anyway), and Dad was married the day he turned 19 (!!!). And that's simply marriage. Then you've got the whole kids thing. What comes after that? Oh, professional development. And then? Sending your kids off to live the same life patterns as you. Because we can talk about our husbands and wives and children and grandchildren like every event is a surprise. And just imagine that people who live in these patters and enjoy it never quit caring.
Maybe that's where I have become callous. And I have to ask it seriously: Have I become callous to the goings-on of others?
All I know is that I am on a path that leads nowhere near Great Grandma Fannie Ham, Grandma, or Dad's way of life. I'm busting out something completely new, and maybe not knowing where I'm heading is half the fun. And then again if in years to come, I look back in regret, wishing I had done it their way, I suppose I will have to consider what becomes of the life I ended up living anyway. All these questions make me want to circle them in red and make arrows to a comment that says, "Too many questions. Express as inquiry." But the grammarian inside of me can't mess with the biggest question I have:
Who really knows where he or she is going?
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