Look at the stars, look how they shine for you.

I caught up with my Anthropology professor from last semester outside of her office today. I've never been one to go to a teacher's office on any occasion, but she has asked me to stop by for the tutoring and it would be a lie if I didn't miss her this semester already. I speak of her often, but she really has made a difference in my life. It was she who helped to open my mind and opened doors for me that I wasn't quite aware were there. For that, I will always be grateful to her. I am a better human being for having taken the Anthropology classes with her as well as the Sex, Gender, and Power class, and that is so rare to say about a class. She forced me to think and not just regurgitate information back at her, and isn't that was learning should be?

Perhaps it came from the discussion about mortality in one of my classes this morning, and of living life to the fullest. Or perhaps it came because a question like that must eventually come when there is some discontentment in life, but I had a "What am I doing?" moment. That is a question I avoid, because as much as I can hide answers from others I cannot hide answers from myself. So instead, I ignore. I'm amazing at ignoring. There are problems I am fully aware of, yet ignore completely. That question and the answers that follow is one. Being drunk is one of the few times I will acknowledge the existence of such problems, but after an incident of waking up on the dining room floor with the Christmas tree on top of me like a blanket and no recollection of how I ended up there, I have stayed away from my old friend vodka. The thought snuck up on me -- one moment I was blissfully pretending the real world didn't exist and the next I was not so blissfully struck with such a question.

The answer to that question is that I have no idea and there are very few things I hate more in life than not knowing an answer, or being able to bullshit one. I have never been a big planner, but there are things I want to do in life and none of them involve ignoring reality. It isn't even about not knowing what I want to do in life. That will come in time, I have no doubt. Why all my friends are in such a rush and have their entire lives planned out already confuses me. It works for them, but there is no fun in that for me. There is this entire world out there I haven't seen and am making no effort to go outside that comfort zone to see pieces of it. Work, school, home. Those are the three places the very vast majority of my time is spent. I don't want to just hear about places -- I want to see them. I want to experience all the world has to offer. I'm just waiting for the day I stop talking about it and actually do it. And I have to ask myself, "What is stopping you?"