This Desert Life

This summer I learned that I can no longer pretend I’m going to live forever. I think it’s like the chicken pox, this realization, in that it would have been easier for me if I had gotten it when I was younger.

After a lot of soul searching I came to understand part of the problem with my mortality is that I feel like I haven’t done enough with my life. In fact, my life is not very much like I thought it would be by now. My life really isn’t that different now than it was when I was a kid. I go to work instead of school and have a bit more autonomy, true, but for the most part I’m as free as 10 year old with a room as his own.

I don’t feel like a total failure. Far from it. I did manage to move across the country and thrive in a town where I didn’t know a soul. I did finish graduate school. I have a steady job and a stable income and I’m not really lacking for anything material.

I’m just not living the life I kind of expected I’d have by the time I was closing in on 40. It’s not that I had a lot of concrete expectations. I just know this stage of my life isn’t what I thought it would be.

So what do I do? Do I move off to another town and start over again and hope I don’t peter out in another decade like I did here? Do I stay here and reinvest in this life and try to make it something more to my liking?

I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of clarity right now. I can’t feel my future. I don’t know what it should be.