This summer I decided to be a full time summerer. My friends and I made this sort of Bucket list, and actually accomplished most of the things on it. Every day we were up to something new, we went on daytrips, I made fortune cookies, we went stargazing, had a tea party, went hiking through a creek... that sort of thing. It was glorious, and I was sure I was changed by months of making my own decisions finally, of not doing things simply because other people told me to do them.
I got a second job, thinking it would make me less attached to the first. But the opposite occurred. I now realize that my first job may just be as good as "a real job" is ever gonna get. And my summer is now over, as classes start back up, I find myself bending to all the demands placed on me, without hesitation.
And I wonder, will I ever really change? In the whole scope of things, can I ever really improve? Can I ever really mess up?
I've lost 30+ pounds a year ago and kept it off, but now I look back at photos from my childhood, which I had thought was nearly defined by my weight struggles, and see a perfectly normal, even healthy girl 9 times out of 10. Even at my heaviest, I was not justified in thinking my weight was a hurdle I couldn't jump. I've always be so close. In these same two years, I've made new friends, and lost them already.
When I was deciding on a major for college, there was a time I thought I could never pick one thing and just do it for the rest of my life. How could I ever make that kind of commitment up front? But then art somehow hit me between the eyes, I couldn't imagine doing anything else. I feel in may ways like I've always sort of known art was the only thing I've ever been consistently interested in, but then, I have days when I think, am I out of my mind? Art isn't a career, it's barely a hobby. It's what children do before we are able to convince them how futile it is to try and create things carelessly. Being an adult requires incessant planning. But then I'm right back to the point of digression, the realization that all everyone else is doing is more or less futile, and at least art is enjoyable; whereas most people have come to accept that life for them is all about pointlessly doing things you don't want to do, I'm choosing, "bravely" I've been told, to pointlessly do what I want.
All this to say, somehow, a future that seemed so uncertain is forming, becoming past faster than I can process what's going on. At the time, events seemed disjointed, insignificant, and now... I can't imagine it any other way. Looking back, it's an obvious trajectory.
