When I was little, maybe in elementary school, I had always imagined that I would never actually turn sixteen and I had all the time in the world to grow up. I pictured being sixteen as this wonderful period of my life where I would have the most exciting adventures everyday with my friends after school and I would be able to continue my worry-free lifestyle. To be honest, because an hour seemed so much longer when I was an eight year old, maybe that was its true length before my concept of time became corrupted with age. A year just flies by now, while as a child, it felt like a lifetime. Before I knew it, elementary school and middle school had flown past along with my freshman year of high school. All those ideas I had of high school were just results of being mislead from television shows and books; reality is, time goes fast. All the time. Not just when you’re having fun, contrary to popular belief.
A couple of months ago, I had taken the s57 with Neriel home and we began talking about colleges and the future when he brought up a significant point, a big reality check kind of point. He mentioned that next year, next literal year, we would be seniors come September. Before this, I hadn’t realized how soon that was because I always considered the gap between now and then to be two years, giving me more time to indulge in my indecisiveness.
All this talk about going to colleges, or preparing for would-be careers make me so bitter because I feel like a huge chunk of time had just been stolen from me. Especially when I was reading this manga earlier this evening, (leavemealone.) one of the characters said this:
“ After all, once you become an adult...You’ll have to live as one for more than twenty years. By the time you find employment, get married, have children and then raise and teach them, your life is already over.”
That one quote was so heartbreaking, yet to me, entirely true. Call me cynical, but that essentially sums up life in a vague sense. I’m going to be spending the majority of what counts of “youth” in school preparing for the “future” and when I’m finally out of school, I’m going to be spending another considerable amount of time preparing for the next phase of the “future.”
In summation, everything is just beginning to happen so quickly and there’s barely any time to sit around and do nothing in peace, without some silly thing like college off in the distance in my mind, or even something more immediate like the next major test I have to successfully conquer. I’ve only lived for sixteen years and yet, already I need to make a decision on what I want to be when I grow older and hope to stick with that decision before I waste thousands of dollars and years of education to do something I don’t like enough, or possibly even hate. Plus, without college, I’m just going to fall into this endlessly deep hole and have my arms cut off so that it’s impossible to climb out of without an epic miracle like a spontaneous development of wings. All this is probably why I have a strange distaste for people who have managed to develop a strong ambition for something they want to do. Sure, they’re probably going to be pretty stubborn about it, maybe even to the point of being unrealistic; but at least they’ve got a rock-solid path to their goals while mine remains some shit crumbly sidewalk, ready to collapse into nothing at any given moment because of my lack of skills in the highly advanced art of decision making.
Regardless, in the short period time that I’ve been here, I’ve gone through so many different career options. From being a gardener, writer, pianist, graphic designer, a surgeon, to reverting back into nothing, I’ve stayed with the idea of being a surgeon the longest. I figured that I should probably put my “steady hand” to good use but after taking Living Environment with a certain teacher; I became skeptical of my own dedication to study something like that for such a long period of time and the only thing I found reassuring was being a surgeon provided a stable job. Although, the lack of dedication is my own personal, and what I consider to be, biggest fault; to be entirely honest, I’ve never been too hardworking and I rely too much on luck. This single flaw plays the biggest role for the future since I won’t be able to do anything without overcoming it.
After some very thorough thinking, I figured I would fare best in pursuing some kind of art or design as a career. Yep, I’m probably going to die poor and because of that, I’m also probably never going to achieve half those things on my long term to-do list, but that doesn’t sound so bad now. I probably want to go into one of these things:
Movies (Animation, Special Effects, Editing, etc.,)
Editor (for Magazines and books)
It doesn’t sound too horrible. Ahahaa, but that could be because I’m rationalizing it and the reality is that my life will be shit.
END: Anyways, now that I’m actually sixteen and managed to successfully disprove all those stereotypes television has created, I’ve come to value the concept of time a lot more and appreciate it for its true worth because the fact is, I don’t have all the time in the world. And if the future comes out ridiculously bad, well, it must be fate.
P.S. So in the future, while all you guys are making salaries within six digits or maybe five, at least let me make your business card. LOL. I know, I’m ridiculously charming.
Sorry if that was depressing. ]:
P.P.S. All I really want is to be a bartender, mannn. Leave me aloneee.
