What am I doing?

Wow, I really suck at keeping this thing up to date! It's December 6th, and tomorrow is a day that will forever live in infamy, but today? Today is a pretty standard Tuesday in all honesty. In 3 weeks and a few days I'll be setting foot in another country on a continent I've never visited. There will be city exploration, beach lounging, glacier climbing, wildlife observing, camping, hiking, hostelling (apparently this isn't an acceptable verb, but it ought to be), and much more besides. I'm also couchsurfing for the first time which simultaneously frightens and excites me.

Two weeks won't be nearly long enough to do everything, and I'll be exhausted by the end, but I will have no regrets. And that's something I can say without even the shadow of a doubt.

it will be a welcome escape.

But what must it feel like to have a life that need not be escaped? I've wondered about that for awhile now. I find joy in each and every day-don't get me wrong. But I often ask myself, "What am I doing?" and I can't really answer that question in any meaningful way. I haven't found the love of my life (or even a consistent lover at that). I haven't had children or started my own business or published a novel or gotten a promotion at work. Instead I'm quitting one job and looking for a replacement for the other. I scribble down ideas that amount to nothing. I engage in my fair share of Facebook philosophizing. I go to parties every once in awhile. I drink a good lot of coffee and wine. I tell jokes and I read my poetry when the compulsion hits and I play with words. I do crosswords and I watch tv shows no one has ever heard of and I binge-read Wikipedia articles on places I may never set foot. I cook and I sleep and I don't spend as much time doing either as I would like. I don't really feel like I've accomplished all that much. And I need to. And I have no idea what the something I'm supposed to do might be, but it needs to be done, and that sense of urgency never really leaves me, if you know what I mean.

I'm a writer in my soul with a seeming inability to impose order on the chaotic stream of consciousness that is my raw material, the granite that I'm supposed to chisel into a Grecian god or something. Or perhaps a cherub. I should really start with a cherub. Those are a dime a dozen, right?

None of this is getting resolved today. I'm going to go explore the interior caverns of a glacier. Maybe something will click inside me and I'll finally know what I have to do. Until then I'm going to try and have a good time.