A case of the worries

My apologies, this post will diverge from the general topic of college and branch into a whole bunch of things.

I've been thinking a lot about the future lately. About a lot of different futures in a lot of different points in my life that can go a lot of different ways. I kinda just want to get them out, but I'm not entirely sure how to begin.

I guess I'll start with the closest. I want to volunteer at the local Humane Society for the rest of summer. It probably won't happen because they make you take a information course, but it's only offered the 3rd (insert weekday that I forget here) every month. And this month's passed by the time I came up with this brilliant idea and the next one held is the week before I go back to school. Load of good that does me. But...at least I have ideas for what to do when I'm bored during a break? Of course, I won't have many of those in the future.

I'm so scared about living in an apartment next year. There is someone there who wasn't in the "original line-up" and this person might just make my life hell. At least I'm taking charge of the bills. That should be fun. And that means I should get the mailbox key! I'm kind of excited about checking mail everyday. I used to love doing that as a kid.

I want to take a whole bunch of cruises and I can't get that stupid idea out of my head no matter how many times I look at cruises and be like, "Ok, see these? Now put them aside and bring them up when you actually have the means to take a cruise oh a whim."

I want to go to Alaska with my mom and only my mom. I want to bond with her before it's too late. I feel like I know nothing about what my parents were like before they were parents and that sucks. I finally realize that I don't know my family. I mentioned it to her in passing and she was like, "Not this summer, right?" I said no, the next, but that makes me worried too b/c I'm going to Japan next summer! How will it fit?! And my brother graduates high school! I can't miss that! But that means the cruise would have to be in the maybe 2 weeks I have after school gets out and before my brother graduates and my dad and brother won't want to take care of the dogs!

My boyfriend wants to take a cruise to somewhere warm so I thought of the Caribbean. Perfect winter break idea. Week after holidays, right before school starts. But that means we can't go to California like we did last winter break. Or to Colorado to ski like we kind of planned last year (we were sleep deprived and almost decided to take an extra weekend to ski in Colorado meaning we get back almost midnight the day he goes back to school). Or go to NYC like I kind of wanted.

Kinda speaking of my boyfriend, from time to time one of us will say something about after college and it's always assumed we'll be together. Living together, taking vacations together, working in the same city-ish. That's a really big assumption to make and I think we both know that we'll take any job we can get, but it's weird thinking we could be on completely opposite ends of the country. But that's still 2 years away until I have to deal with that one. I'm not even going to get into the possibilities of more than 2 years with him. Not this publicly, not when I'm being this candid.

Oh, going back to cruises, there's my desire to take a cruise and hit Italy and France and Spain and maybe Greece again. Egypt would be cool too. After a 7 to 10 day cruise, I could spend no more than a week hitting other major European cities. Actually, a friend put the idea in my head and it's something I would like to do with a group after we graduate college (the group in my head are all HS grads from 08). But I graduate a semester early, one member is going onto med school, another is on a completely different school schedule than the others...I don't know the details of the others but I'm sure there will be issues there too. No clue how that will work.

I'm worried about going to Japan and how I'll do with my host family since I'm not taking a language course this year. I'm afraid I will get lost - I'll need to make sure to bring my GPS with me. Hopefully that will do the trick. I'm not sure who will go next summer since it's usually a lot of freshman and I don't know them. Ugh, I hope someone from my year-ish considers going. It will make me a lot more comfortable.

Now that I'm on the college topic, I'm taking two journalism courses next semester and I cannot wait to get started on those. But I don't know what to expect and one is writing intensive and I really need to do well so I can get into my sequence early...I think I'm going to turn this future concern into a separate blog post. It's kind of important.

So somewhere in all that cruise talk, my boyfriend mentioned that boats sink. Even though I assured him of the boat's safety that got me thinking about my death. The absence of everything. I'm less scared than I used to be, but only when I think about dying at an old age, having fulfilled everything I want to do (family aspects not included, many of those things are hinted at in this post) - like that one Scrubs episode where a patient (an old lady) doesn't want her family to know she will die soon. JD doesn't understand how she can be so calm about death. He creates a list of things he thinks people should do before they die and reads it to her during his afternoon off. The dying woman has done everything, but points out that he probably hasn't done more than a handful. She tells him to go out, enjoy his day off and to work on that list. I want to be that woman! I have a small list of things in my head, but it's more of a "do before you're 30" list.

All this boils down to is that I have a lot of things I want to do and no clue how to make it happen. Yet. I just need to calm down and trust that when it gets closer to when I can actually do these things I will follow through.

I think in the meantime I'm just going to blog surf and flip through the infinite number of cruises out there. That calms me down enough for me to sleep.