"If Left Alone"

Change: to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc. of something different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone.

This blog is supposed to be about change. Changes in life, location, environment, responsibilities, self identity. It is the change from a child to an adult. Change from a student to an individual whose actual job is to go to school. The change of moving to a new place and trying to start a new life. I like this definition of change. To make something different from what it would be if left alone. Noticed how I haven't written a post since May 15?

Aside from a four hour ceremony at the end of the school year, change hasn't really happened. I moved home, put my stuff away, and started the same job that I've carried for the past 4 years. (Alright, its a slightly altered version of the same job. More on that to come later.) Seeming as I'm afraid I'll lose all my readers if I wait for something terribly exciting to happen in my life (still months away) I though I'd take a moment to reflect not on the changes in my life, but their absence.

When I was younger, I thought routine and commonplace would be my enemy in life. How horrible it would be, I thought, to be 30 and expected to settle down, stay in one place, have kids, go to soccer practice and worry about groceries, gas, and dinner. It would be as though all the excitement of life ended. All the firsts: kiss, car, apartment, job, promotion- just coasting to the end. (Rarely in my younger days did I pause to consider that the commonplace and everyday happen to you when you are prepared to meet it with open arms. Your goals and desires do, in fact, change through the years.)

I lived for the day I graduated high school, always knowing I wouldn't go to college in Mississippi. Please don't misinterpret my meaning. I was and am not one of those kids who grew up hating her hometown. Indeed, I love where I'm from, and love it all the more as I watch myself interact with other societies.

I blame my parents entirely.

It's kind of like how I blame my dad for introducing me to the love of my life, Mr. History, when he could just have easily introduced me to Mr. Neuro Science or Dr. Corporate Law, but that's a different story for a different day.

At the time I graduated high school my parents and I had visited 45 states and 5 foreign countries. Come August the count goes up to 49 states and 16 countries.

Lesson: There are billions of people living billions of different lives all over the globe. I think its always been a part of my life's goal to live as many little lives in my one big life as possible.

Anyway, back to absence of change. I no longer think routine in the great enemy of life. I think its Comfort. Not the comfort that makes each day a pleasant sigh of breath, though. I mean the Comfort that prevents what you should and would do if it were absent, the " if left alone." It's this Comfort of growing up in a small town where you know everyone that prevents you from taking the opportunity to travel or go to school somewhere new. The Comfort of school prevents you from getting a job, or the Comfort of a job prevents you from going back to school. The Comfort of a relationship that prevents you from doing anything in the singular form. I do alot of battle with Comfort in the summertime.

I like my job. It gives me the Comfort of independence and money. It gives me the Comfort of childhood memories and an intriguing status among the public. I adore the Comfort of wearing my uniform. Most dangerous though, is that my job crosses over with my "Mr. History" just enough to lull me in a false sense of security. The Comfort allows me to think I can do this for the rest of my life, and I could. But at the end of the day this is not what I burn to do. Park Ranger Lindsay is not who I yearn to be (right now at least). So imagine the frustration. I'm in daily battle with my old enemy Comfort, while waiting with open arms form my knight and shining armor Change to whisk me away from it all. Unfortunately, Change is still too far away to save me yet.

It appears I'm all dressed up with no where to go.