Vitamin Life

Lay it out, map it out. Explain yourself.

What career are you choosing/have chosen? What relationship are you currently in/pursuing/getting out of? Have you seen enough of the world yet? Why not? At your age why don't you have a set path? At your age why are you already so stuck in your ways? What exactly are you waiting for?

Do you ever feel that you have to define your entire life?

At twenty-two, I sometimes feel like I have the whole world at my feet. Yet, I worry that I'll wake up one day and feel like I haven't really done a single thing. 

To top it off, I constantly hear people say, "You won't do all these crazy things when you get married and have kids. Get it out of your system before you settle down." It's the mentality that you must to do everything NOW because pretty soon you'll be old, and old people don't have fun. (*please note the sarcasm)

Or it's the other extreme that if you have too much fun, and never really settle down that you'll end up without a career, relationship and forced to live in your parents' basement. If you're lucky.

I hear people my age fuss and drone on and on about their lives. I watch people's ears perk up at the mention of other people's travel plans or relationship status changes. I see those same eyes glimmer with envy at people who have found careers or apartments.  It's a strange secret competition. 

It seems that most people want to see the world but have a career, relationship or "adult life" to fall back on when ready.

Also, social media allows everyone to keep track of people that you really wouldn't give a hoot about otherwise. You can see photos of that random girl who you kind of talked in university jumping off a cliff in Thailand. People can weigh themselves against other people their age and wonder if they're at the right pace.

With only a few months left as a post- graduate student and internships approaching, I'm going to be transitioning into a whole new phase of my life soon. The tough questions jump rope all day in my mind. All my worries and fears point and giggle at me. One second I'm high heeling it to work in the city and the next second I'm living in another country, scribbling away in a notebook.

And then I meet the newest addition to our family, my baby cousin Daniel Lucas. 

He's brand new to our world. A world that sometimes leaves every single person on the planet confused, lost and overwhelmed. I gaze down at his day old wrinkled face, and hold his swaddled body in my arms.

Right now, I am exactly where I'm supposed to be.