Treading Water

Tomorrow marks the three-month anniversary of my college graduation.

Since then, I've traveled farther north (just south of Iceland), south (Miami), east (Paris, France), and west (California) that I'd ever been in my life. I visited the oldest National Park in the country, Yosemite; climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower; spent a week building houses with Habitat for Humanity on the Katrina-ravaged Mississippi Gulf Coast.

And yet I feel like I haven't gotten anywhere.

I've taken up yoga. I've nearly finished a screenplay. I'm developing an idea for a book.

But I don't feel like I've accomplished anything.

For some reason, I guess I thought as soon as I graduated college I'd miraculously have writing gigs galore. Never in my life have I wanted a "regular" job, but now I know I'm not going to feel, or be able to live, like "regular" adult until I have a "regular" source of income.

And I still plan to make that happen through writing -- freelancing for magazines, newspapers, and any other options I scrounge up -- but in the mean time, I don't feel like I am making any progress in life. Sure, I've traveled across the country and across one ocean since I finished college, but I wonder -- cynically? practically? -- where has that really gotten me?

The experiences and memories of these trips are wonderful assets as I try to start swimming into the rest of life, but for now, while I'm treading water, they just seem like fun but useless experiences and pleasant but unhelpful memories.

Hmm. If I just put them to work in my writing....