What do you get when you work 30 hours a week and go to school “full time”? Unhappiness!

I’ve been struggling to find time to live my life, rather than just going through the motions. Being in my fifth year of University, it doesn’t seem like the time to drop out of “regular” life to take on a life of vagabondry or backpacking. I find myself focusing more and more on the future (real or completely imaginary) to compensate for the complete lack of anything exciting in the present. I suppose this is the ascribed destiny for most of the Western world’s population; placid drudgery with a 2 week slice of sweet freedom once a year. I won’t even bring up the people working in free trade zones in the East. Doesn’t everyone dream of escaping it, especially during the idealistic phase we all go through in our 20s? Why is my life going to be any different than that of everyone else?

I wish I was more of the risk-taking type. My personality, my complacency, my unwillingness to attempt anything remotely scary will be my downfall. This list was a first step towards actualizing a thought I had. That I didn’t want to be 80 and have memories of working in a cubicle. I wanted to have awesome memories of drinking with rockstars, climbing mountains, and seeing everything this planet has to offer up. The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion I am wasting the best years of my life on the same kind of drudgery I want to avoid later in life. People I know are doing awesome things: volunteering in Peru for a semester, going to Ghana and South Africa for classes, three month long trips to Europe. I sit instead and plan out how to do this stuff later because in all honesty I am scared shitless of going off the beaten path, of going it alone, of being by myself in the vast spaces that fall outside of my comfort zone.

I need to get over that. It’s a requirement. Fear is not something you can take with you. So! My goal for the next semester is to find something travel related (working abroad, volunteering in a third world country, etc.) that scares me and just DO IT. Hopefully I can work something out for this summer or for Fall 09 semester that will jolt me out of my middle class suburban safety.

Have you ever done anything that made you uncomfortable or scared just to say you had done it?