8 Years to the Day on a 5 Year Plan

There I was, a fresh 18 with about a month’s worth of wear on the new tires so to speak and I was content yet restless to begin. It’s March of 2009, where I am living the life less ordinary as we all do; to define the current situation more I was just recently an adult as American standards would tell us. I had just had a birthday the month before passing the torch of sevenTEEN to eightTEEN which we all know is bullshit because there is another TEEN after that beginning with nine, and I have never encountered an 18 year old adult. Contrary to one’s assumptions I was not in school, no I did not make the mistake of dropping out, nor did I have the intelligence to skip a grade, but I had somehow managed to graduate early due to many moves and a conglomerate of credits totaling that magic diploma worthy number. A bit of a levity enraging situation occurred soon after I had discovered I was a graduate when the school battled me and forced me to return to classes after Winter break as a cruel joke of sorts almost insisting they had more knowledge to pass on to me. I returned for a week in January, compliant & mature yet fully knowing my horrible math skills were correct and this hall of education was miscounting what a calculator and multiple confirmations that this “adult” was indeed a graduate and they could not withhold my liberation of graduation. Fast forward to March again, I had been out of high school for a couple of months now and the reality was settling in of WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW? There was a job of sorts I had done through high school that would be any teen’s dream, I worked at concerts and had an in with a couple of venues and such in town. After that eight hit the beginning of my teen I really did not see a future in that line of work and knew it would be unfulfilling to what my intentions for life would be, and so I reflected. Sounds hard to believe right? A self reflecting new adult/ aged out teen brooding over life’s next step, let us laugh for a second there, even more humorous is how none of us grow out of this stage. Truly who out there isn’t thinking “what is next?” or “am I heading down the right path?” seriously who has the damn directions to this place called life and why hasn’t GPS finished rerouting me? Resuming to your destination… I was reflecting, not in an egotistical typical teen way of why is life not handing me anything, but more in what does the world see of my reflection as an individual that is here gazing into the chasm that is the mirror of the world. Now by this time my inner GPS had been rerouted by myself and by chance many times over, I wasn’t very decisive about where I wanted to go and well being out in the world earlier than the average time frame that’s laid out for you is an eye opener. I had some great people in my life and the uncommon thing for me was basically how the only pressure that was being put on me was by myself. My friend of many lifetimes had already been placed in her throne of ultimate companion and she encouraged the next step of college and further education. After all she had seen things no other way, and well quite honestly she has always been very definitive of the logical choice one should make to further learn and advance for future positions in professional and intellectual life.  She may not know this but she is the only reason I felt confident enough or why I even submitted applications to a couple of universities, her persuasion of making me see I was brighter than how I had mildly applied myself in school was a divine intervention. Alas I was not decided on college as my way even with the couple of acceptance letters I had received much to my surprise; my GPS was recalculating. -SM