Alternative Life #...

I actually wrote this post for my personal blog, but decided to post it here as well to break up the wait for the actual field studies blog post I've been writing up. The content is what has been on my mind over the last few days here in India while I've been working out my class schedule for the fall, and working on my classes for the summer. I have delayed my graduation a couple of times now and officially could have graduated last April if I hadn't delayed it again for India. My life often doesn't take me anywhere I fully imagined ahead of time, and I find it interesting to live in this world full of people living so many different kinds of lives, so sometimes it gets me pondering about what directions I might or could go next.
 
Here's a conversation I just had on g-chat with a friend about my upcoming graduation plans. There are a few things about graduation that come up in my mind - like that I'm so over it even being a big deal anymore because now it just seems like a desperate attempt to actually finish before I've been in school for ten years, or something tragic like that - to wishing I could just stay forever.

In the mean time (as in all these years I've been in school), I've come up with a series of alternative lives for post graduation years and I explain a few in this chat...so because I'm lazy and don't want to re-type out the ideas, you're getting a copy paste job below.
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Now that I realized my field studies classes will finish my International Development minor I really only have the three humanities classes I delayed last winter left to graduate -- I should just graduate in December and be done with it.

I'm partially afraid to move on to...who knows what, and I partially, already, miss school since I know I'll be done soon now and it's been my life for - most of my life.

I want to get a job in an office on campus and take a free class every semester -- and go to all the free lectures and stuff I usually don't make time for these days. I was a lot better at that my first few years of school, actually...but also a lot less busy.

Actually...alternative life:

I want to be a teacher, and live in my own small one or two room apartment, and come home and learn to make new foods and eat them while I devour shelves of books that I've been collecting and piling up over the years of reading what was dictated to me - which I'm often grateful of because it introduced me to things I should know or are good to know and authors I do want to read - but choosing will be nice for once.

Alternative life #2...

Maybe live in an even smaller but probably more expensive single apartment and work in an office in a really big city

and eat small breakfasts at small cafes really early in the morning while I read - 
and work in some big office with lots of interesting people to see every day, where I have to dress up...kind of fancy...like office fancy - and I'll take yoga classes in the evening and maybe pick up painting even though I'm rather not artistic in that way

it would be like therapy, artistic therapy that people stuck in big cities with too many people always need, right?

Alternative life #3

I'll take a yoga instruction course and go live in a small town in the mountains of Colorado and provide yoga classes for all the visitors. While I live in this quaint tourist town I'll take skiing lessons on the side and hike during my spare time...hike places where I will read and write for hours and contemplate publishing something one day.

Alternative life #...I've lost track

I'll live outside the U.S....and Canada - and teach English while studying languages.

I'll probably hone in on my piano skills, listen to good music all the time, crochet, and maybe a little tap dancing (other dancing is a given for every life choice) - this all on the side of most of these life choices.

Probably audition to be in community theater production.
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And that's where it ends.

My Wandering Feet

Actually, that's just where my g-chat conversation ends, but there are so many "alternative lives" to come up with and so many things that could happen, and a variety of things to experience and try and work on...
Yet I'm dreading (ahead of time) the thought of moving on to any one of them, or a couple of them over a period of life after graduation, and just wishing I could stay in school.

It's really the fear of disappointment, or of being disappointing. So, I'll work on my faith and my hope in myself and in life and mostly in God, which faith improves my ability to have faith and hope in those other two -- and all will be well.