My junior year at this fine institution has roundly come to a close and I quite frankley am dumbfounded. During these life moments my mind and sentiments are barraged with incessant streams of thoughts and emotion that I can never get my head around. It also happens that in these times, I am so unbelievably preoccupied that these undercurrents of sanity are forsaken and bide their time until I happen upon a moment of introspection. Enter that moment, stage right.
Beyond coping with the fact that some of the most brilliant and lovable folks that I've yet encountered will be merrily thumbing their ways to their next set of adventures far away from me and the memories we made together, I'm overwhelmed by all that time has done and will do to all that I have and will come to known.
The best way I can think to describe what I'm feeling is thus. The past few years, and most of what preceded them exist in my mind as though it were all anecdotes that someone related to me in passing. All of my life feels as though it has happened with me serving as only a passive observer. Neither positive or negative, I'm just in this mode where I am foreign within myself. It's strangely soothing to be in such a funk with all of this nostalgic business of graduation and goodbyes happening all around me.
It's still relatively far off, and feels just as distant in the future as driving, and applying to colleges still feel, but I am at the point in which I have to choose or not choose amidst an endless array of life scenarios. And while no decisions or career paths need be permanant, I can't help but just become dazed in trying to discern which will serve my ambitions better: grad school, staying in Poultney and building up the pending biofuels co-op, finding an NGO to work for, a big corporate entity in need of greening...?
Even harder than deciding what I want to fill the next handful of years of my life with is settling on where to follow through with whatever proves the most fruitful prospect. Vermont is feeling so much like home right now, but so did the Pacific Northwest; Santa Fe is one of my favorite cities to this day, but how much I could glean from settling down amongst the trailblazing environmentalists in Germany, Spain, or Scandinavia?
As I fumble about trying to figure out my life ahead--and am dumbfounded again at all the life that has already played out in my yester-years--I am jealous, proud, and dismayed to watch my friends graduate and go on to heroically enlighten the next generation of elementary school kids, help environmental advocacy organizations reach their potential, stow away life experiences through travel or volunteer work, or continue their education in all things auspicious.
I am utterly astonished at how all of the people that I feel like I just met are making me so uncomfortable with their absence.
Even though all the wonderfully brilliant times I've had over these past weeks, months, and years have all come to fast and left to soon, I'm finding a lot of solace in the scientific fact that I've never been disappointed at what comes next.
Comments (3)
Good point, buddy.
Posted by Will | June 5, 2007 4:55 PM
Posted on June 5, 2007 16:55
I've managed to ignore that this (losing a bunch of amazing people as well as actually figuring out what to do with my life) is going to happen to me... but next year, I'm going to have to face it more than ever. It's a frightening thought, it is.
I really like your writing style. For serious, this entry almost brought me to tears.
Posted by Nicole Ainsworth | June 7, 2007 12:22 AM
Posted on June 7, 2007 00:22
Hey Joe, you seem like a cool guy, somebody I hope to meet in the Fall. I think you have a great approach at life and yeah, I'm only going to be a Freshmen but well hope to still meet you and people like you. I am from NY but will be up in VT, my Mom grew up in southern VT,wild huh? on the weekend of July 21st. hey give a shout back on my email if you want. It'd be good to talk to people who go there as I am kinda scared, kinda excited, ya know the deal. Thanks! Justin
Posted by Justin Schottler | July 9, 2007 8:56 PM
Posted on July 9, 2007 20:56