reflecting on expectations and obligations

I've been out of school for almost a year (well...summer school, but who really counts that? (except dr. h's speech class, that was real stuff)), and I'm starting to evaluate my life; not so much a judgemental sense, more a reflective look at the last few years leading to this point, the paths ahead, and the expections and failures and successes I've gone through.

I've spent a lot of time wandering and pondering--pretty much all of college--just taking life as it comes. It has and continues to work well for me, but responsibility and dependency inevitably set in with [time and] age. This means my own living arrangements, transportation, food and a job to support the wants and needs of an early twenty-something single guy. My last year in college living off campus eased the transition, but the real world is harsh no matter how you enter it.

For me, the hardest part was the unexpected move closer to the monotony of life after college. I've seen this life in others and am a bit afraid. Yet some of my family and friends have maintained a certain level of excitement throughout their lives, and I have hope for myself. But this syndrome, living life as preservation of the species, threatens at every turn. I graduated right on cue (with a summer session margin of error), got a job, and now looking at buying a house. And I'm only twenty-two. Crazy. For me at least; some want to get on with the rest of their lives, marriage and houses and kids and such, but that's not me. Not that I'm trying to artificially delay the rest of my life--time waits for no one--this is the rest of my life, chillin' and taking things as they come. But the more and more I think about it, this house thing is another step down a path towards that great dull light of adulthood.

I'm not saying a house and the responsibility that goes with it, or any manner of adult responsibility ultimately leads to a lame existence, but it can. And I know myself, I'm not worried that spontaneity will fail me. But I do fear opportunity will fade into obligations. The house thing, along with other minor decisions in my life, are not necessities, or much wants, just opportunities. And what happens when I rush into a binding agreement because it makes sense and find out, months, weeks or even days after it's too late, that there's more for me than the path I've chosen? Sense, logic and reason have always closed doors and narrowed my paths, and I've always embraced the gift of choice and done what I wanted anyway. Two things usually happen: it turns out better than it could have otherwise, or I end up learning things the hard way, but sometimes that's the only way I learn, and it's always the best way. This is a gamble I'm willing to take; sense, logic and reason be damned...I'll use you when I feel I should.

Commitment is for some people, and maybe an older version of myself, but me, now, no way. I will try again in a few months and see where I am; maybe by then I'll be comfortable enough with myself to know that no matter what obligations I have or will undertake they won't hold my back from being me.