Drumroll Please

The future is a blank slate, and I wonder if I’ll let nuance fill it for me. Will a phone call and a handshake set my path for years to come? Or will I take charge, decide on my own? I’m without a doubt at a crossroads.

Everyone always asks me, “What are your plans after you graduate?”

I shrug, throwing out the generic, “I don’t know, get a job.” Sounds just like Tyler Durden, scrubbing himself in a filthy decrepit tub.

I think everyone needs to live a story. The suburbs pump out a stench of cozy corporate jobs, high school kids, and fucking yuppie housewives. I can just wait, see myself filling out TPS reports, living for a blissful weekend, consuming. Half of me says fuck that. Then I realize I have to eat, pay for gas, not be a bum in my parents house.

So what if I did this.

What if I moved to Colorado and scrounged up whatever shitty IT job I could find. Maybe work nights. I’d live in a wooden shack in the wilderness and write novels. I’d be Kilgore Trout meets Thoreau.

I’d grow my own herb and brew my own beer, and have an acre garden of potatoes and veggies to feed only myself. I’d throw out random flash games, or do php scripting for small indy companies. I’d be a tinker, fiddling with carpentry, or robotics, or electronica. Maybe I’d put out something original and innovative.

And that would be me for a year. Fuck making money, fuck being a surburban success. Maybe there’s a dirty hippie inside aching to get out.

I have a degree, a solid physical piece of paper, condensed out of the liquid blood, sweat and tears of four years. That’s the past, this is now.

We’ll see.