The Rest Will Follow

I know there’s a lot to get to around here. I have somewhere around seven hundred (yes, I know) photos still waiting to download and upload and share. And yes, I know, I have stories to tell. Shark stories and beach stories and, well, just island stories in general which, as we all know, are interesting and amusing without even trying. I will get to those, I promise. Really. But I also started back to school this week and because I’m really quite a pain the rear when it comes to carrying my title of Good Super-Anal Student, a lot of my time is spent getting organized and back into the frame of mind that allows me to somehow balance all I take on.

It is really good, though. It’s encouraging to me that though I knew it was in me, this drive and this will to do something new and challenging (that actually has a good possibility to determine the rest of my career) is a reality now. There is nothing wrong with dreaming, of course, but at some point a person has to decide what they can do something about. What dreams they can follow and actually help along. There is nothing like that time (I won’t say moment, because it’s quite longer than a moment) where you realize, first, what you’re good at and, second, that you might just be able to make it into your life.

I know I don’t talk much about school and my career aspirations around here; that’s not an easy thing to do. I’m scared. It’s early. I’m protective. I’m unsure. It’s a little unusual, but that’s me. Throughout my life, I’ve always had varying goals and dreams, like anyone else. I have realistic, short-term ideas like: get a raise. I have had ideas and plans that, with a lot of work, might some day be real. Then I have huge dreams, fantasies even, that are not only impossible, but are sort of my escape from what life really is. For a large majority of my life, I wished and hoped that one day, I’d wake up and things would be different and this huge fantasy might be my actual life. There have been times when I would have traded my current life in like a used car– with little thought of what I was leaving behind and only the images of new to come.

But lately, somewhere around the post-holiday recovery, the island-submersion and subsequent island-withdrawal and the cold shock of the past few days, I have not felt like I needed any huge dream or fantasy at all. Of course, some might argue that being on an island is a fantasy in itself, but it’s more than that. For once, or at least once that I realize, I need nothing more than to follow through with what I’m pursuing. Rather than planning or simply having ideas, I’m doing it. For once, I believe the people that say “do what you love, and the rest will follow.” For once, I don’t want to swap life stories with that other girl that lives in my mind. The thing I look forward to most is staying right here and seeing how this one turns out.