Junebugs

3.28.08. Riding in the car last night I turned to my friend Lito and asked 'Why don't they teach you in school the things you really need to know about life?' He couldn't give me a good answer. It seems like such a waste, all this book-smartness we're supposed to acquire but really, what for?

"North-bound train on a Saturday
Here I come, New York City
Been deep in thought, on a little sleep
Distance took my love away" -The Starting Line

I was also discussing the twenties puzzle with my friend Jill. She described it as when you are in school, you do everything that your peers do, that's your life. And then after you graduate college, everyone goes on a totally different path. You have to go out and do things, you have to essentially - make your life. Nothing comes to you easily. A career doesn't just happen. Relationships don't just happen. You have to be a Go-Getter as my dad would fondly say. Everything is up to you and often you feel you have no direction or guidance for the big life decisions you are now faced with. Nothing adequetely prepares us for what truly lies ahead in the 'real world'.

"There's nothing on my horizon except everything" -Dwight, The Office

I went home last week and sitting there in my parent's kitchen that first night, as they grilled me, sized me up (Robin, you need to gain some weight!) and shoved food in my face, I thought it was soo nice to be...taken care of again. I welcome that whenever I have the chance to go home, I become that little girl who doesn't have to worry about a thing because the grown ups will make sure everything is okay.

"I want something more than all my possessions,
Something I wanna share with everybody else.
It will be brilliant both to elderly and children,
And be different in a way that can be embraced." -The Starting Line

I'm reading a really great book about the quarter-life times and gaining balance and direction. There are some exercises that I will be posting on here because I think they are wonderful discovery tools and I think we can all benefit from doing them. We all need to slow down, evaluate what's working in our lives and what isn't. The biggest roadblock for us is that we are making HUGE decisions (marriage, moving to new places, having children, going to grad school, jumping from one relationship to another) without really knowing ourselves and what we truly want. When something doesn't work out, we wonder what happened. Was it because we leapt too quickly? You have the rest of your lives to experience these events. Take time to get deliciously comfortable with yourself, and then you will truly know how to live.

"We got older but we're still young. We never grew out of this feeling that we won't give up." -The Starting Line