Call It Torture, Call It University

So, I've really done it now.  I've taken a step towards living out some of the ideals of my older blog posts.  (See 'No One Here...But Me and God' from November 2010, 'Dream Until Your Dream Come True' from January 2011, and 'Accroches Toi A Ton Reve' from May 2011)

Lately I've just felt like I was going through the motions to go back to college, and for all the wrong reasons.  I don't want to go back to school right now.  I feel as though I need to go check out some more of the world before I jump into the rat race to make all sorts of money for debts and payments I don't even have, and for a family I don't see anywhere near in the future.

There are people who, I think, feel like I'm just lazy and want to try to be different just to be difficult.  But really, what better time than now to go pursue something else?  Nothing's tying me down, and knowing life's unpredictability, it might not be very many years before there are responsibilities and committments which could limit my ability to go do what I want.  Not that I will resent it if/when I'm married, but it's just that I ought to go do my traveling and world-seeing now before it's too late.

So I went through with it.  I have ceased the enrollment process at a community college around here, and am hoping to move out sometime soon.  Out of the community I've known my whole life, and into a place where I feel like there's something to be had.

There's tons of people who are telling me that it's a bad idea to do what I'm doing.  I respect those opinions.  The bottom line is just that I have no desire to go through it now (and this isn't a question of laziness, it's a question of 'it's my choice to make and I made it'), and I'm not going to waste my own money or have money wasted on my behalf on something I don't want to be doing.  Maybe after a year or two, all this sabbatical will do is give me a newfound appreciation for school.  And if not, then I bet that I'll have found something I'm perfectly content doing if it's enough to dissuade me from going back to college to fulfill my societal role as a brick in the wall.

Not that everyone who goes to college is just a drone...I just feel that at this point, where I'm at now, if I were to go to college even though I didn't want to, I'd just be shuffling along and acting as I feel I'm supposed to.  And the awesome thing about life is that you don't have to act the way you're supposed to.  Society has plenty of opinions on what we're supposed to do.  Go to preschool, go to kindergarten, go to elementary school, go to middle school, go to high school, go to college, get a job, get promoted, get a car, get a house, get a wife, get a kid, get a promotion, get a vacation, get another kid, get another car, get another wife, get promoted, get a retirement, get a grave plot.

Or, you can go do what you want.  I'll let you know how it feels when I've had more time to flesh it out.