Complacent

Do you ever find yourself completely aware that right now really counts for something?

We get so fucking complacent in our lives... especially in this age group.  There's a validation to being young and free and uninhibited... and noncommital and inconsistent and fickle.  The road is paved and we can sway from side to side and take respites or free-passes here and there, but overall, we are still on the same sort of journey as most others.

Real talk:  Here's what it is.  I pride myself on being an "old soul" and feeling very self-aware, yet I am terrified to move forward because I don't feel like my job here is done.  There are so many little things I still want to get done before I can really progress without regret.  I think I excuse my own complacency because I don't want to "conform" and I can write off the fact that I chose to travel instead of go the college-nine-to-five-post-grad route, but that's pretty empty.  The reality is, I really don't know what I want.  I don't feel the same pressure as everyone else to move so quickly through life and follow the rainbow to the picket fence and perfect family.  I have goals, but I don't have a timeline.  I just know that when I'm meant to move on, I will know it.  It will happen for me because I will want it to happen for me.

I'm feeling a lot of things here, in this town, seemingly alone.  A lot of what's happened these past few weeks makes me think that some elemental force is telling me to get out of dodge- because everyone else did, because every five steps I take here leads me to stitches or fines.  Because I'm not happy.  Because I want more.  But I'm not ready to start over in a new place, as much as that seems like the easy fix-it.  I quite like California.  And my life here.  It just needs some work.  I don't think I recognized how much I enjoyed it until now.  I'm just really lazy.  I've been lazy for awhile.  I'm not seizing life the way I want to.  I haven't gotten what I wanted to get done done.  I need to do that.

I'm at a fork- and it could be self-imposed, or influenced by the changes happening around me, or presented because my girlfriend is also at a fork and has more-or-less chosen her fate.  My fork is to move or to stay.  Move and start fresh.  Stay and fix this.

I think I've gotten a wee bit lost these past few years.  Right now, it's hard to deduce exactly why I feel that way.  Whether it's the influence of what everyone else seems to be doing that makes me feel like I haven't fulfilled my necessary obligation to society.  Whether it's my own disappointment in myself for not having my ends trimmed and tied tightly.

There's still something here that wasn't here before.  When I got back from Europe, there was nothing that kept me in Folsom.  I stayed because I didn't want to go to San Diego and I couldn't stay in Europe any more.  Settling back into the ol' routine was pretty easy and has created a lot of opportunity for me, but I never really chose it; I just didn't choose anything else.  There were a handful of months there, I could have gone anywhere and done well.  But I replanted in the same soil. And now, something holds me here.  And I will it to do so.  I'm not ready to leave this behind.  I'm trying to figure out why.

Or who.

Has manifested my sense of unfinished business... or impending regret... if I go.

I feel suddenly aware these days that all of this really counts.  These hearts are real now.  This shit is getting real.  Life is hard.  Life is happening.  It's all happening.  And it always has been.  But I feel it tonight.  In my stitches as they strain; I flex my hands.  We can write off a lot because we're growing and this is a transitional time, but the reality is... we are 100% accountable for how we carry ourselves through every stage of life.  And I'm not as proud and I'm not rising to the potential I know I could be.

I'm afraid of what I've lost.  And I'm afraid of what I might lose in really coming into that knowledge.

It scares me to think of all that's already behind me.  I'm almost 23 years old.  Sure, that seems young.  But that means childhood is gone.  High school is gone.  Awkward growing years and first kisses.  For some, college is gone.  For some, being free is gone.  For some, they have willed themselves to become their second priority... after their own children, after their partner.  I'm 22 and so much is behind me.  Yes, so much is ahead of me, but I feel my years.  And I'm not running with them like I know I could.