An ending and a beginning

I know I said I would blog during the summer, but my heart just wasn't in it. Every humorous experience I had was totally unfunny to everyone else. Such is the life in Conference Services. While I find 18 hour days and stolen laundry carts hilarious, no one else does. It just wasn't worth it to blog. 

Around the time I stopped blogging I also unfortunately lost my grandmother. My family spent a week at Babunia's bedside before she died on July 19th at the impressive age of 93. As her life ended and mine was just beginning I had a lot of time to think about how she spent her 93 years. Looking at pictures with my father it was her quest for life that just kept popping up. The places she went, the things she saw, nothing stood in the way of her curiousity. One of my earliest memories of Babunia was crawling into bed with her when I was little and listening to stories of her, my grandfather and my father taking summers off to travel the country in a convertible. While this personality trait would sometimes cause trouble, nothing got in her way once she got her mind to it. I have dreamed of seeing what she saw since I was a child, but my sense of rationality has always gotten in my way.

The night before she died I went to see 'Away We Go' with my friend Stacey. The general plot line of the movie is that a couple (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) travels the country trying to find the best place to raise their unborn child. At one point John Krasinskis tries to convince Maya Rudolph that they need to stay in their original town just "because it's their home". Maya Rudolph asks how do they know it's their home if they've never been anywhere else. I had been contemplating traveling cross country ever since graduation but at that moment, I knew I was going. I had never been more sure of anything in my life. 

The next morning I was woken up by my parents telling me that Babunia had died. I'm a big fan of sentimentality so I like to think that that sense of confidence in my road trip was Babunia's goodbye, her parting words to me. Despite the fact that I believe Babunia would prefer for a desire to learn Polish to be her final effect on me, it's those early morning tales of the open highway that I always associated with her. Now she's gone, and I've got to hit the road and see what she saw.

With that this blog has ended. I did not fail but succeeded far beyond what I ever thought possible. I graduated from the number 23 school in the country. Sure I don't have a job, but I've finally stopped making excuses. On September 15th (or 16th) my friend Ch'nel and I will hit the road and spend the next 4-5 weeks driving a circle around the country. We're not sure where we're stopping, but really that doesn't matter. I just want to see things. I want to see prospering cities just as much as I want to see cities that saw their best days decades ago. I want to go to zoos and national parks. I want to camp under the stars when I can't find a hotel room. 

My life has been planned for me since 7th grade when I took up squash so that I would have something to write about on my prep school applications. Once I made it to prep school I led clubs and captained teams to get into one of the top schools in the country. With my background I was supposed to graduate into a fantastic job. I didn't. For the first time in 22 years my life didn't work out as planned. And I'm happy. I'm not saying I wasn't happy before, believe me I was, but for the first time I've realized I can be happy without knowing where I'm going to be next week. 

Babunia lived to be 93. If I'm lucky to live for as long as she did I still have another 70 years ahead of me. If I don't, oh well! Whatever the case, I think I can afford to take a month and live life off of the track to success. 

The journey will be blogged, no worries. Please let me know if you would be interested in housing two lovely, jobless college graduates for a night along our way! When we come back to New Jersey I will hopefully have a better idea of what I want to do with my life. Right now it's just too hard to apply for jobs when you can't even come up with an answer to the question "So what do you want to do". After a month of contemplation on the open road...I hope I can at least return with an idea of what I really want to do.