Friday, October 19, 2001  9:45 PM

In the moment thoughts on a Friday night in October

 What the hell am I doing here?  I’m 22 years old, living in Greeley, Colorado.  I don’t know where I thought I’d be by now… maybe famous, maybe on my way to something that would make me famous, I don’t know.  But definitely I didn’t think I would be here.

Every time I’ve ever had a great idea for something, it’s never turned out to be as good or as big as I’d wanted it to be.  And I hear this voice in the back of my head telling me that life is like that.  That sometimes, all we can do is to shoot for the stars, and that if we get off the ground, then it’s been a success.  I think this is bullshit.

            It bothers me so much that people just settle.  It bothers me even more that I just settle.  And the question I come back to so, so, so often is to ask what God wants of me.  And I get an immediate answer; to turn my life over to the will of the divine.  Oh, I’ve been there once, or at least thought I was… it led me to a break-up, financial debt, and headaches.  During this time, I thought I was listening, and I was.  I just haven’t decided yet, or maybe I don’t yet have enough information, to know what it was that I was listening to. 

I often feel like giving up my life to God’s will would mean for me that I would follow the path of people like Francis of Assisi… who give up everything and live in the middle of a field somewhere rebuilding some broken-down church.  These people are generally misunderstood and ridiculed by family and some so-called friends their whole lives, only to achieve some sainthood posthumously.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the path St. Francis took was a courageous and valuable one, it’s just not a path I believe I can or should have to take.  But that’s me and my desires coming into play, and my desires sometimes seem to have so little to do with the divine that I don’t know what to do with them if I turn myself over.

I don’t feel like I belong at UNC.  And yet, when I leave here, and go out into the “real world,” (I hate that term, it’s as if someone thinks the world that I live in right now isn’t real… the fact that I look at my bank account every day to see that I’ll be sure that I will have enough for rent and food seems pretty real to me.) I will probably look back and see just how much I did belong and how much of a family I had here, just like now when I look back on my four months in Germany.

And I am blessed.  Don’t get me wrong there, because I have had a lot given to me.  I just don’t know what to do with it.  I really don’t.  I feel like every time I try to use the skills I have been given and am developing, I am not rewarded, and in fact am sometimes punished for doing so.

            Moreso, I feel out of control of my life, my world, and myself.  It is as if I walk into traps, kind of knowing that they’re there, and am there to intentionally find my way out or something.  I don’t know.  I guess that might not make much sense.

I just feel lost.  I don’t belong with a group of men who say one thing and sometimes do another, being so big on talk that some don’t understand action.  I don’t want to be there just to be an example for some of the others, which is what I feel like I’m doing there right now.  Not for me, but so that I can be there for others.  Is that a righteous path?  I don’t know.

I lack foresight.  Hindsight, I am excellent at. But foresight eludes me.  It’s as if I’m driving a curvy mountain pass, and foresight would have allowed me to see that deer which I thought might be there, but dismissed because of my own stubbornness, or because of my own tendency to not believe in myself, and instead of avoiding the deer, or better yet, stopping to admire it, BAM! I smack right into it.  Leaving me dented and the deer injured.

I don’t feel like I’m being true to my heart either.  I never really believed in falling in love until last year, when I got to spend some time with this beautiful girl.  I guess not believing in falling in love led me to believe that people don’t fall out of love either.  When I’m honest with myself, I realize that I still am in love with her, but don’t understand why.  I know as well that she is no longer in love with me.  She has ‘fallen out’ of love with me.  She still loves me, but she’s not “in love” with me.  And there is a difference, one which I never understood, and maybe still don’t.  I don’t know.  But my heart really hurts, now knowing that I will have to learn, through this, that falling out of love exists just as much as ‘falling in’ love. 

My heart hurts too that I feel like I have lost the ability to be a good friend for her and to have her do the same for me.  Our friendship was partly based on illusions, and partly based on the greatest form of reality man has ever known, and what I’m finding is that neither seems to exist between us in our current every day lives.  Or maybe the reality exists for her, and it doesn’t for me because I feel so lost, and so we are at a loss for common ground.  I really couldn’t say for sure.

Have I always felt this lost?  The answer is of course no, but this feeling has been around for at least five years, when I really stop to think about it… that deep down I’ve not really felt at home. 

My actual home where I grew up is home, and is where I feel the most fulfilled and most needed and most taken care of and is where I feel the best, but I can not feel completely at home there because what was created there, or I should say what is created there, is only partly mine.  And the idea to create it was not mine.  That beautiful idea come real belongs to my parents, the people who I admire most.  And I want something big that I dream of creating to turn out just as big and awesome as I dreamed. 

But maybe that’s the problem…I just dream too big.

I thought about going out tonight, but what I am looking for is definitely not out there.  At least not at some club or some bar where they’re all going to forget that they’re looking for something, or else where they’re going to try to find what they’re looking for.  I don’t know where or what it is that I am looking for, but am 99% sure that I’m not going to find it there at the club or the bar.

The friends I have are great.  They are some of the best friends someone could ask for.  But the one thing I feel like they all share is that I don’t feel very legitimate around any of them.  Like I’m on a different path of some kind, and somehow that becomes de-legitimized when I’m around them.  I don’t even know if I can explain that any better.  They are awesome, the friends I have, and I am blessed to have them.  The de-legitimizing feeling is probably my own insecurity more than anything else.

The nicest compliment I ever received was in 10^th grade.  A guy named Jon who was from Las Vegas and was in my English class came up to me and said, “You’re really genuine.”  And he meant it.  And I guess I don’t feel like I’ve been genuine for at least five years.

So what does it mean to be genuine?  I guess it means to be true to yourself.  And I’ve just spent the past few minutes of your life telling you that I feel like I’m not being true to myself.

I want to share, I want to contribute, I want to really make a difference, I want to make things better.  And I’m in Greeley, Colorado, where: I’ve managed a barely existing radio station and turned it into a somewhat prosperous one, which is now getting better because of those who have followed my lead (I think); I’ve made connections with people which will last me for life, I’ve learned that I can’t effectively do something if I don’t believe in it.

Getting my degree will be a good example of this.  Speech Communications has been, for me, quite possibly the busiest set of busy work I’ve done in my life.  I haven’t really believed in what I’ve been doing, because I don’t see it leading to anything other than a piece of paper called a diploma, which will land me in some corporate world job, sitting behind a desk, feeling like I am now; lost, stuck, like I can’t really make a difference in the big scheme of things since I’m just one small part of a 6 billion-plus organism, which is so deeply entrenched in its ways, that even now, after history showing us countless millions dead and us pledging that we’ll never let it happen again; the seeds are being sown for it to happen again; war.  Massive war, destructive war, and deathly war, stupid war; wrought over money and ideologies, and the ideologies of the opposite sides are not even really very different at their core.

So I am on a path I don’t really want to be on.  This diploma-desk path is one that will lead me to feel as stuck as I do right now.

A popular song lyric says, “If you want to be somebody else, change your mind.”  My mindset right now says that I have to be in college to get my degree, because that’s what I expected of myself in four years before coming to college.  Why did I expect it of myself?  My parents expected it of me, or so I thought.

I am not blaming this on my parents, just saying that me, being their kid and heavily influenced by them, decided on my own that I was going to go do this thing called college where you magically become some sort of new creation when you come out the other side wearing a dress, funny-looking hat, and carrying a rolled-up piece of paper.  Excuse me…I’m sorry… I don’t mean to interrupt, but didn’t I already do this once about four years ago?

Will I be any better of a person for having had my college education?  This I really can’t say right now either.  More educated, more informed.  But more prepared to go out and really make a difference and make things better?  I don’t know.  Only time will show what skills I’ve been able to receive here.  Time and distance I suppose.