It’s an exciting question, to be sure, but unfortunately for the asker, not one to which I have an answer.
I had one of those shower epiphanies the other night, thinking about this question. It occurred to me that around this time last year when I was living in Nome, I was considering the novelty of not going straight home after my season ended, for the first time in my life. I remember the giddiness I felt when I bought a one-way ticket to Anchorage, and quickly soon after, plans formed to spontaneously move to Washington state for no particular reason, and then take a road trip across the country with my boyfriend. These dreams crystallized into reality.
I had no idea how these experiences would change me, or even that they did change me, until recently. I realized in the shower tonight, that these experiences now define who I am. A year ago, if you’d asked me “where to next?” I would have said, “back home I guess.” But today my answer is a confident and content “I don’t know!”
Of course I have some ideas. But the novelty of living on the road without a plan is somehow different, now that I know what it’s like, and have been essentially living out of a couple backpacks and a duffle for almost a year.
You might be surprised (and relieved [looking at you, Mom and Dad]), but believe it or not, I’m starting to feel ready for grad school. My wanderlust remains strong as ever, but an even stronger part of me has an urge to reach for something greater. I’m starting to miss the structure and directness of school, and I’m beginning to see how easy it would be to hit a dead end if I stop trying to achieve.
Maybe working at the pub is helping with this too. Not to say there’s anything wrong with waiters and bartenders – I have high respect for many of them who have clearly come up by their bootstraps to get where they are in life. But there’s also something maddening and saddening about the fact that some of them will never be anything but bartenders and waiters. It’s not that difficult of a job, and I can see how it would be easy to just go from place to place working at restaurants for quick money once you have the skill. I don’t want to do that though, tempting as it is. This experience has been a good kick in the butt to get myself into gear for higher aspirations.
If we’re going to be completely honest here, I probably have at least another year of vagabonding ahead of me, if not more. I don’t mind at all – in fact, I’m looking forward to a little more wandering, now that I’m so used to it and have learned a lot. But wherever I end up this fall, my main goal is to research my higher education and further career options. I’m ready to get focused again.
So, for real: Where to next? Well, I told you: I don’t know! Of course, the answer is more complicated than that. I’ll go here and there, figure out some things in my personal life, go home and visit the family, hopefully pick up a job somewhere for the winter to support myself while I look for grad schools. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that all realities start with the seed of an idea. Last year, that idea was to wander the country for a while, and look what happened. This year, I’ve planted the seeds of higher achievement into my brain, and hopefully if I nurture them enough and refrain from the entangling distractions of life, they will grow into fruition and I’ll find myself a little more ahead of the game.
We shall see. Please don’t hold me to any of this. Like I said, I’m partially going on a shower epiphany here, and we all know where things in the shower usually end up (down the drain).
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