Moving

It's true. I'm moving to wordpress. If you read this blog and want to continue following it, my new blog location is tracynallen.wordpress.com.

Happy Blogging!

To Be

The question is not "To be, or not to be." This isn't a question of existence in general, it's what I want that existence to consist of. I recognize that life is something special and every day will come and ask to be lived. Sometimes the question is whispered so quietly I don't hear it as I work on my daily to do list, sometimes it's loud and exciting.

Yesterday I pondered my convoluted answer to the question of "What I want to be when I grow up." Today as I was reading over the post in the light of a new day, a new word stuck out: be. What do I want to be? This is so much more than a career or a job, this is the type of human being I want to become. Although I don't have a lot of answers about what job I want, I know much more clearly what type of person I want to become, which for a lot of people is the harder question to answer.

I've been compiling my hopes and dreams of becoming since before I can remember. I've been lucky enough to have people in my life that have shown me all the facets of what makes life beautiful. I want to be the best parts of all the people I love, but more importantly, all the best parts of myself.

The great thing about this life long endeavor is that I can achieve this anywhere in the world. I can be single or married. I can have any career. Whatever happens in my life, the person I am will always be the most important defining characteristic and that is an answer I already have.

When I grow up

 

Sometimes as the weight of the rest of my life settles firmly on my shoulders I have to concentrate on breathing calmly and evenly as the sheer magnitude of uncertainty registers in my brain.

Everyone reassures me that it's okay to not know what I want to be when I grow up, and yet they don't stop asking the question. My breath quickens. Each day that destination comes closer and my search for an answer becomes more frantic.

Stay calm. "What do I want to be when I grow up? What do I want?"

I didn't imagine I would be here--twenty-four, single, almost graduated, lacking a definite direction. Scared.

My fear raises my pulse. "It wasn't supposed to be this way" is the first thing that comes to my mind when the question is asked. What do I want? Not this.

Not so many decisions to make. Not to resettle again, the fourteenth time in six years. Not looking out at the big wide world to explore, still alone on my journey. My hurried breath settles into deep sad sighs.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself!" I shout in my head. "You have so many things to be happy about and so many great opportunities."

The guilt settles high in my chest underneath my collarbone, trapped by my shallow breath.

"Calm down, things are going to work out." I reassure myself, and my breath becomes more even. "You don't have to have all the answers right now, just keep working towards them."

But while this answer successfully slows my pulse, it does nothing to unclutter the mess of expectations in my brain just above my right temple, at least that's where it twinges when I shuffle them around to try and make some progress.

I circle my way through this internal argument daily, hoping one day I'll finally get off the merry-go-round and reach nirvana, which is exactly what the peace of mind I receive will feel like. But until that moment,

I'm just a little lost.

It's official: I love New York, but not like I thought I would

I’ve been surrounded by movies, television shows, and photographs of New York City my entire life, but now that I’ve finally gone, it’s difficult to describe what the city is actually like. It’s all of the stereotypes combined, but somehow it felt different: less magical, but still magnificent. I loved the tall buildings and the yellow taxis. My breath literally caught in my throat when I saw Starry Night. The Egyptian temple with a window out onto Central Park at the Met was stunning. The Brooklyn Bridge was amazing how you were surrounded by everything New York—Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty. Chinatown was huge and made me feel like I’d stepped into Asia. And Broadway is best seen on Broadway. It was all wonderful, but it was also very real. It was dirty and there were people going to work and visiting friends all around us. We had to deal with bus schedules and landlords. None of those are bad things, they’re just very normal. Some strange mix between the old dirt encrusted buildings of Poland and the run down strip malls and bright tall buildings of Vegas.

While in New York I was surrounded by tourists, many of them international. For many of them, New York is all they will ever see of the U.S. It will be their picture of America, so I tried to imagine what the picture entails: cosmopolitan, consumer, dirty, cultural, entertaining, and delicious. The truth is that New York is iconic and I loved it, but it doesn’t really encapsulate America to me. It’s the exception, not the rule. I guess if you want to know what I learned this weekend, I learned that I love New York, that I will go back throughout my life, and that you shouldn’t generalize from limited experience.