Two Roads Diverged in the Woods . . .

Summer is awesome. It’s truly great. The late breezy nights and small town flickering lights. The bonfires with friends with the smell of lingering, freshly mowed grass. Cheap snacks, movie marathons, and cussing at retro video games. Late night creep cruising and giggles on hot pavement at midnight. Chats about nothing and not giving much thought about what’s going on around us. Staying out way past curfew and 3 am phone calls from parents on our where-abouts.

That’s what it was like in highschool anyway.

It’s different now and I’m not sure if it’s as awesome. Or mediocre great.

The friends I did have, I either have no longer or we rarely on occasion get together. But it’s definitely not the same and it kinda, sorta sucks. Where has it gone? Perhaps it’s because we have all turned our separate ways, found new people, and gone to different big box cities – places we thought were cement playgrounds waiting to be climbed on. But it’s big and it’s box-y and most of us got lost in it, so caught up in the places and paces, we all just forgot about each other. Or perhaps it’s because we each found “our group of people” and would rather forget about the old memories – both bad and good. Or maybe we just lost track of time and space and people and got jobs and got girlfriends or boyfriends … and… and.

Or.

Became adults. Grew up, grew out, grown old of the childhood-teenage escapades.

Now I have became one of everybody else. Who gets up, goes to work, comes home, turns on the TV, and maybe, doubtfully exercise, shower, and goes to bed just so I have enough energy to repeat everything the next day.

I want to take the path less taken – not cool Robert Frost; you never said how hard it’d be.

I want to take the path that gives a new experience every day, is that too much to ask myself for? The path where I wake up and wonder. Where I brush my teeth with a paste that's a different kind of mint. The path that I drive to work on a different route that isn't the same expected traffic light frequency. The path where I might get a phone call from an old friend or a new friend or a friend that I don't even know yet. Where we can talk and make plans and create a different kind of schedule made for a different time of day that doesn't consist cheap cable and mindless YouTube videos where we laugh the same fake laugh just to go back to bed and sigh the same sigh after a long night of nothing. I want the path where a weekend isn't an opportunity to do laundry and scrub the same soap scum that stubbornly and utterly refuses to leave the lining of the tub. I want the path where I show up to work with a smile plastered on my face that isn't a mask that can easily be pulled off. I want to take the path that where I'm genuine, where I'm real and in the moment, where I can speak what I need to speak and hear what I need to hear. I. Want. This. Path.

Where is this path.

It's right here. And yet I am overcome by my own convincing that this path is not for me. WHY? Because of finances, I've got loans, I've got bills that I'm not even sure I'm able to pay when they get crammed in my little, tiny silver mailbox that's in my apartment lobby. WHY? Because I've got a job that I go to work that I'm not even qualified for. WHY? Because I've got dishes in the sink and people that I want to talk to that I haven't talked in so long that now it's become awkward to send a random message to. WHY? Because I don't have time to take from my own self absorbed pity party that I throw for myself on my couch in my little, tiny living room every single day. And yet I still am left wondering.

This path is not for me.

Why!

Why?

Why.

This path is me. I am this path. It's time for me to start walking it.