Neither Plucky nor Nostalgic

     Three blogs in two years? A record, it must be. And for all those  people who ask whether or not I intend to update any of my other blogs (Two Dead Oxen and a Snake Bite, or Twenty Something Nostaliga) I will not tell them about this blog, which is only my name. No funny or meaningful title.

     I am not sure what I intend to do with this. In a way this blog is my message in a bottle. I am in my mid twenties and I don't know where I am going. My first blog represented the nostalgic musings of a recent college grad who was wandering the wide wild world outside academia for the first time. My second blog comprised of the plucky reflections of a pioneer, striking west to find the building blocks for her future.  This one will be neither. I am back east, still trying to determine whether the raw material I collected will amount to anything at all.

     I have a future, but mostly because I keep waking at up in the morning, and the mornings keep marching on towards the date when my next job begins. And I am not ungrateful, I am happy to have this job. And I am certainly happy to have my future. But I am tired. I am tired of moving from place to place, I am tired of not having the money to pay back my parents for everything they have done for me, tired of wondering whether my boyfriend and I will be able to successfully build a future with each other, and tired of working jobs that keep me busy but don't necessarily make me happy.

     In high school everything felt like a beautiful crazy dream. In college I never doubted that it was all out there waiting for me, like some cosy house all set up waiting only for me to move in. My friends and family tell me I am too hard on myself, that I am doing my best and will surely land on my feet, as I have so many times before. But I feel like a performer spinning plates. And every time they wobble I invent new ways of rebalancing them all. My boyfriend tells me not to worry that everything will be fine, but I wonder when he says that whether he can see how fast these plates are moving and how close I feel to dropping them all.

     And we are all tired of hearing about it, aren't we? But what is the key to happiness in all of this? How long can you expect yourself to keep hopefully applying for jobs and packing boxes, driving miles and unpacking again, showing up for first days of work, showing up for last days of work, packing boxes and doing it again. With a smile? For how much longer, if at all.