What am I doing??

I'm sitting here in my new bedroom in Manhattan, and I'm happy. I am happy because I am graduated (magna cum laude, b****es) and life is mine to do what ever I want. I am happy because I am not Lacey, who is downstairs working on a summer class project as I type this and talking about the hellish weeks of school ahead of her. I am happy because since school is over, stress has left my life (I haven't had a break-out on my face since school ended...the solution was that simple). I am happy because I have a full-time job at a busy restaurant where I should make some good money (as far as restaurants go), and I haven't had money to spare in a LONNNNNGGG time. I am happy because I have a big room and bathroom and closet all to myself with space for all my things and my photos and my sister's artwork; it's freakin fantastic. I can go for a walk when I want, I can read any book, I can eat when and what I want, I can do nothing if I want! So far, life is good.

Should I be worried about the fact that I am a server at a restaurant after just spending 4 very stressful, expensive years in college to get a degree in biology, dedicating lots of sweat and tears and hours of my time to? I could be, but I'm not. The job will come, and graduate school will come. I'm tired of tests and being judged by my gpa and volunteer work and leadership in organizations. I want to make some cash, spend time with friends, drink good wine, read good books, and see what I missed out on while I stayed up late studying bacterial division systems and territorial animal behavior and C4 photosynthesis. I'm pretty sure I missed out on a lot.

But, I am still uber-conflicted. I wonder if the choice I made to live in Manhattan for a year was the right choice. Did I think through my options enough, or am I just settling for this option because I have a few friends here and the town is friendly? I didn't want to stay in KC, even if the job opps were better. I didn't want to go home. But what I do want is to go west, and I didn't do that. My excuse was that jobs were too difficult to search for and relocating would be too hard to organize during school and I have no friends out there...

AKA I was scared to take that big step into the unknown. I want to live in the Rockies. It is my heart home, you know, that place where you always feel content and perfectly peaceful. Every time I visit I can't help but take a deep breath and smile because I know I am at home. David James Duncan describes it well in his autobiography that I am reading. "Who hasn't noticed, in their world wanderings, the way we sometimes slip into a mysterious niche, even in the most foreign of places, and find things so suddenly familiar that we feel inexplicably yet completely at home? The cause of this at-homeness is a mystery. The sensation is no less certain for that." I feel this when I am in the Rockies, and I felt it in Barcelona as well. I never felt it in Liberty, MO...So why haven't I been trying my hardest to get to my heart home and put my wandering self to rest??? Well, I'll blame it on the lack of monetary resources and being scared.

Now I kinda regret it (not taking that leap into the unknown). In my last post from last December I wrote about what I might do after college and mentioned my dream job: rafting. I have said this is my ultimate job for years, but always with a smile on my face like I knew it wouldn't happen. But why??? Why can't it happen?? I was in Durango, CO 2 weeks ago and went on a half-day rafting trip during the biology convention. First off, let me say that practically all the guides were men, and they were HOTT. But, that's off subject. What I want to say is that I asked about rafting and how to become one, and it involves a training session either during March or May and job placement is pretty much guaranteed if you pass and do well. Well, hell, I could do that! I console myself by knowing that in March of this year I had nowhere near $800 to spend on training so I wouldn't have done it even if I had known the details. But next year...I think next summer is my chance to get on board this great fun job opportunity because it is before grad school research and stress, and I don't have some salary job I have to stay in. It can be the chance to learn some new things, find out if I like guiding more than just riding rafts, and hang out with lots of fun, relaxed, and good-looking men. I don't like working or hanging out with women anyway; they just tend to bicker and see who can self-depreciate themselves the most.

I'm sort of jumbled, I went back and wrote more in some areas. That is why it doesn't flow too smoothly, but it's not a big deal! hasta luego