I feel like I'm in one of those times of life where years from now, I'll look back and feel compelled to write a letter to your younger self with reassurance and maybe a little advice. I've decided that I don't want to look back at my youth with shame or regret. This year could easily be described as one of the hardest, most stressful yet. But instead of looking at it that way and feeling negatively about it, I've decided that I'm going to do what I want now. No more worrying about what other people think or want. It's my life, and you're only young once.
I honestly couldn't tell you what it was that caused me to have this change of heart. But I know that things happen that are out of your control, yet you still have to live with the effects. It's part of life. People make decisions on how to carry themselves and lead their lives and it affects other people however big or small, and you just have to pick up the pieces and move on. I don't know why this knowledge suddenly means more to me now than it ever has, but it does.
I just know that things are the way they are for a reason, and the reason isn't necessarily always bad and it really isn't necessarily always something you can change or even control. So just deal. I took a good long look at the situations I've surrounded myself with and instead of being ashamed or sad about it as I so often am, I just said to myself, "yeah, so?" I might not be able to change the things that could need changing in the eyes of someone else right now, but just because things are slow and crappy now, doesn't mean that they'll always be. And instead of having a stress level that rivals my mothers, I decided I'm going to do what I want, (responsibly, of course) and have fun. So I'm going to keep my crappy-typical-college-student life (and the piano lessons) and try not to think about the fact that 20 years from now I could be married with children, or the world could end tonight...
The flip side that is incredibly hypocritical, is that since I would prefer that things move along faster rather than slower, I decided that instead of being a student forever, I'm only going to school for one major instead of two. It really wasn't even my impatience that made up my mind about it. At the end of the day, I had to ask myself whether or not it's really going to make a difference, am I honestly even going to use it? And the answer was almost never definitive and even less positive.
It sucks because I really like Spanish. And I'm pretty good at it (at least I like to think I am) since I took it all four years of high school and four semesters of it in college. But I really had to ask myself whether or not it will have any relevance in my career, and I honestly don't think it will... And considering I was really only going to use it as a back-up plan in case of another economy crash, (in which case I would have to go back to school anyway for a teaching license and a refresher course) it stopped making sense to think that spending extra time and money getting a degree that will probably just sit on a shelf and collect dust would be beneficial in the long run.
Honestly, if I had my way I would be majoring in Art History, believe it or not. But the way the economy is, and the nature of that particular field, there's no way I would actually do it. C'est la vie. We all have to open our eyes to what's really around us eventually, I suppose. Even though I've made up my mind to live my life the way people expect someone my age to, I gotta think about the major probability that the world isn't going to end today, tomorrow or within the foreseeable future and how I get through that time and the rest of my life reliably and happily, a complicated combination to say the least.
