Adulthood

I always thought being an adult was going to 

be different. Not sure how different but I did 

expect it to be different. I feel most aware of 

time and it's passage than I have ever been. In 

childhood and school days it always felt like 

time was this never ending vastness that was

stretching far into the future. As the years have 

passed I see time as a thing that is hurrying to 

rush past me before I can even comprehend 

what has occurred. Milestone moments of my 

life feel like blips on my life and they begin to 

recede into the cavern of memory. I imagined 

that by this age I might be a husband and father 

but that has yet to be the case. I live in an age 

of infinite information yet I feel true wisdom to 

be in available in precipitously small amounts.

I am not alone in how I live but I know many 

who live vastly different lives. There is no right 

or wrong in this but rather in what we grow to 

value and love. I ask myself what I want and 

oftentimes it falls into a few humble things: 

to be able to provide for myself, to be left

alone to my own devices, indulge my mind 

and writing, to travel and explore at my leisure, 

to enjoy the company of family and friends, to live 

a life not dictated by financial and societal pressures 

that seem to grind so many into husks. I have a job, 

a car, bills and obligations of my own choosing, 

and I am largely happy. I do feel unease at what has 

been done or left undone. I think about the coming 

years and wonder how they will be. They will be as 

they must. Of that I am as certain. I think of my father 

and how he is the most adult person I have ever known. 

His work ethic, his sense of duty to his wife and children, 

I have known no one more exemplary of the qualities I 

feel make a good adult. I know he is human and fallible. 

He has made his mistakes. I feel as thought I am lost and 

wandering. Am I waiting to be found? If so, by who or 

what? Perhaps I have merely been in search of myself. 

There are times I cannot help but feel foolish. How dare 

I consider myself an artist when there are so many others 

far more talented and deserving of such a title. I create 

in my own ways for myself because I must. If I were to 

not do this I would die a slow death of the soul. 

I am reaching out. I am looking for ecstasy, peace, 
and transcendence. I wish to be more than what I am. 
I wish for everything and nothing. That is all I could 
ever ask for. I hope my journey has many more years 
in it. There are disappointments and heartache but I 
would be foolish to think of myself as having been 
the only person to feel such ache. My pain and suffering 
is but a drop in the vastness of time. Perhaps not even that. 
In time this may change or it may not. I am here and I am 
thinking about this life, this self. I continue on and I hope 
I am making the best of it. Perhaps some day I will be at 
home in a small house of my own deep in the land of my 
father and grandfathers, listening to the birds and wind, 

wondering about nothing and everything.