This Post Has Been Rated for Adult Content

I've never been one to be Afraid of the future, but I have, certainly, had my doubts and anxieties about what it holds. Of all things to cross my mind, besides the overall question of where I will be come May of 2008 and whether or not I will be going for a PhD or scrounging to find a job, was just when did childhood, teenage-dom, and the early twenties give way to real life? When did we or will we grow up? There are times, given the things I have had to deal with in my life, that I feel much older (not in the ugh i'm old sense)/wiser than my 23 years of age...and then there are other times that I just feel as if I have been left behind, and those I went to high school or college with me, are leaving me behind- getting jobs, married, and even kids! The thought of even being a mother in 7 years has me a little apprehensive. I do wonder how my parents were able to do it. My dad confided to my sister and I once that it made no difference, whether it was me, my brother, or my sister, and then my other brother, he felt completely lost and inadequate for the task of raising a kid (and this was when he was 28, 30, 33, and 37, respectively). I never asked my mom about this. She seems to just take things in stride. But....bah...enough about kids. That's a long way in the future.

I know that for me to ultimately do what I want to do, I need to get a PhD, but, on the other hand, I have this overwhelming feeling that I am going no where while I sit in a classroom and do assignement only meant to keep me busy until the final term paper due at the end of the semester. At least, some of my very close friends are still in grad school, so that makes it a little bit easier to deal with the fact that I'm slogging in grad school, but at the same time, come this May, more of my close friends graduate and go into the real world. There are times I just think enough is enough, no PhD, get a job. And then hate said job. And wonder, why I didnt get a PhD. It's a vicious cycle!

So overall, this random rambling and general pondering comes to this: we all develop and grow at different rates. Now some of you may be thinking "No Duh Bernie...really????" But sometimes you have to state the obvious. Certainly, it puts some things in perspective when your friends from high school are married and having kids, but it is also a perspective that makes you realize where you are at in your own life- marriage and children really don't fit into the life plan right now. Eventually, they will, just not now.

But how fast time goes by just floors me...it just seems to get faster each year. Yesterday, I was driving a van up to Virginia Tech, moving out of the state of Texas for the first time in 18 years. Before that, I was sitting on the back porch of the Chicken drinkin' Shiner and playing 42, and before that, I was a wide-eyed freshman at A&M, meeting the girls of Davis-Gary...and before that high school shenanigans and IB (the death of any social life for a high schooler), and before that, playing with My Little Ponies and GI Joes with my brother (with the GI Joes riding the Ponies into battle).

And funny, as I finish this post, on my Itunes, "Long Time Gone" by the Dixie Chicks is playing...how apt....

"I caught wind and hit the road runnin
And lord, Ive been a long time gone

Been a long time gone
Lord, I aint had a prayer since I dont know when
Long time gone
And it aint comin back again"