I am 24, going on 23, living at home for free.


I fear I am slowly re-becoming "Them."

I heard an anecdote about Ken Lay the other day, taken from the days when he knew the ship was sinking at Enron, but before the world was to find out. It was his wife's birthday, and he threw her a lavish, $200,000 party. Why? they later asked. Why would you throw away all that money when you saw the writing on the wall? Because, he answered, he couldn't not live that way any longer. He'd become too accustomed to the lifestyle of a man who can afford to throw $200,000 yacht parties to go back to a cake and a cookout.

I can kind of relate to Kenny Boy.

For over two years, everything in my life was new and fresh and exciting and significant, all the time. I wrote, about everything, some on my blog, more in my journal, and even more in the little notebooks I always carry around with me in the side pocket of my Carhartt's. I wrote because I was bursting at the seams, with ideas, and love, and passion, and angst, and humor and fear. I was bursting with life. Never did I feel so alive as in those days. "Those days." I speak as if they ended long ago. They ended in August. Back when I was young.

When I was 22, and school had finally finished, my brain was working harder than it ever had before. I was on the road, man. By myself! There is nothing more invigorating. Every conversation with every new person was a case study in the search for a truth that could transcend race and nationality, history and religion, as if I would finally be The One to find it and spread the news with the others. I viewed my life as a narrative coming into its own, which is why I paid attention to details, to words that hit my heart, as the storyline took its unseen twists and turns.

I simply trusted the ending would be a happy one.

Being alone for much of the time, I became more independent, and more confident. At different times, I became enlightened. But at the end, I came home.

And now I find myself sitting in my room, a few months away from turning 25, with a treasure trove of memories that make me smile, and give me goosebumps, but seem as if they never happened at the same time. And when I really try and tap into those memories, I find that there is a lot of stuff that I've just forgotten.

Like the whole thing never happened.

Here I am, in the midst of some of the most uncertain economic times in a century, with a job (albeit, temporary) paying me more than I am worth, and a free place to stay, and a loving family around, and yet I feel anything but content with my life. I want to feel content, but I don't. I worry that I have made it impossible to do so, by setting the bar so high for what I want my life to be:


Freedom, foreign languages, constant stimuli in my everyday world, exotic women, and plenty of time for introspection, something that is too hard to do when in the presence of those who knew you back when you were someone else entirely.


Maybe I've become too accustomed to a certain standard of living, like Kenny Boy.

I daydream about leaving, on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again. Like an alcoholic who drinks to keep his buzz going. Oh babe, I hate to go. Too many places to see, too many people to meet, experiences to have, stories to tell. It would never be enough, I know that. After South America, what next? The Middle East? Then what? Asia? Australia? Is that it? No. Russia? Alaska? How about somewhere else in the United States? I've always wanted to live in Portland, but New York would be so cool, too.

This is how my mind works, at 100 miles an hour, every moment of every day. The second I start to get any kind of money, I'm only thinking of how long I could travel on it. Or where I could move to, and how big of a cushion I'd have before this latest act of irrationality put me in a tight squeeze.

The only problem is this: will I long to stay 22 for the rest of my life?

Where do you draw the line between staying true to your heart and doing what makes you happy, and realizing that you've got to take the next step forward in life? I don't want to wake up at 30 penniless and jobless; I don't want to wake up at 30 with a lot of money and no stories. I want my cake. I want to be able to eat my cake, too.

Why didn't anyone ever tell me how hard it would be, this transition? Why didn't my dad ever tell me he didn't magically transform from a kid into a man over night?

I don't know what's going on. I just shaved my head, too. Bob Marley would have words to say to me: "Them crazy.... them crazy..... we gonna chase those crazy baldheads, out of town."

That actually might end up being a good thing.