Tuesday, June 19, 2007

planning ahead is overrated

Want to hear a funny joke?

I’m supposedly an adult now.

There is no punchline.

Apparently, it means I’m supposed to become a faceless cog in a soulless machine contributing member of society, although I had hoped that majoring in music performance would prevent my ever being useful to civilization. Conceivably it’s possible that one day the fate of the world could rest on my ability to give a musically stunning rendition of the Creston....

I never liked the world all that much anyway, though.

It seems that an automatic advancement to adulthood is mandatory when one is done with school forever, because everyone knows that no student could possibly be a real adult and that one magically receives maturity when they stop going to school (or gets married, has a podling, etc. The Rites of Passage are many and varied). Now that I have been forced into these ranks, I’ve been asked numerous variations on the same question: “What are you going to do now?” My answer is invariably the same: “I have no idea. I have no plan.”

That’s right. No plan at all for my future. I am the best adult ever.

(I will also note that it is amazing how quickly this response can kill a conversation.)

In a vague sort of way, I am aware that I need to acquire shelter/practice space and the means to both eat and pay off my student loans. I don’t yet know how I will accomplish this. For now, I simply console myself with the knowledge that if all else fails I can return to an earlier life plan that was developed while I was working on my master’s degree – to live in a box on the street and read Dostoyevsky until I starve to death.

Hey, at least I’d have a plan.

1 comment:

Apkiwa Tiafi said...

While Dostoyevsky would certainly set the tone for certain doom, I think that I would personally go with irony and either read Terry Pratchett - or maybe I'll finish reading "The Da Vinci Code". The advantage to that would be that it would certainly bring the death sooner as I would poke out my own eyeballs with a stick OR be so overcome with the knowledge that it became a cultural icon that I gave up all reason for being.