Tuesday 13 December 2011

A Bit of Rambling

We couldn’t have started this blog at a more opportune moment. Not only do Ricky and I have many exciting and documentable adventures ahead—both separately and together—but I have been in a bit of a writing rut, and I am grateful for the venue to express myself once again.

You see, the last few months have been ones of massive change. While waiting for Ricky to finish out his last semester at McGill, I have embarked on several firsts. The first time my occupation wasn't "student," the first time I waited tables, the first time I drove a car, and the first time I planned a trip to London, Amsterdam, and the entire United States. Not that any of these endeavors have made for a time of particular happiness or excitement—in fact I have spent most of my days (in New York, living with my parents) warding off existential crises.

What am I doing with my life? What are my true interests? Is my English degree good for anything? Should I be looking for jobs rather than planning trips?

Reading the news—Occupy Wall Street being a prime example, and mostly chatting with my fellow waitresses, has reminded me that, at the very least, I am not alone. I am not alone in wondering what my next move will be, in worrying that I am slowly letting my life slip away, in getting the sense that the longer I wait to join the rat race, the less likely it is that I ever will. I am not alone in feeling confused and disenchanted.

That’s why Ricky and I have decided to prolong our professional lives—not to say that finding jobs would be so easy if we decided not to—in order to get in touch with a few more natural landscapes first.

After spending these past four months living like a hermit (when I wasn't waiting on grouchy New Yorkers, that is), I am going off to London and Amsterdam to visit friends who are actually doing productive things with their lives in grad school (though, that is arguable as well), while Ricky is going to Israel for the first time on Birth Right. Following these adventures, our final destination is America--the land in which we were born, but also the land in which the two of us have spent little of our adult lives. Having met and gone to school in Canada, we are both anxious to discover (and re-discover) our country through a four-month road trip across spacious skies, fruited plains, and amber waves of grain.

It should be pretty interesting.