Where I'd Rather Be

I want to feel the the sun raging on my skin as dust whirls and swells across arid African plains, coarse grass shimmering by my Jeep in a blur of silk. I crave to be behind the lense of my Canon Rebel, capturing the culture, living for the outdoors, sleeping under the stars, and following forbidden trails that map the desires of my heart. I desire to seek the rare glimmers of the primal and the primitive. I yearn to escape from the monotony of the civilized. 

And I want to get paid to do what I love-- to engulf myself in a world beautiful and austere. This office job just doesn't cut it. As much as daydreams tear down my patience, the vision of traveling the world as a photojournalist for National Geographic is both my motivation and my yoke. It grips me, it calls me. It's a reverie as comfortable and worn as the soles of my shoes.

As a college student, It's accepted that if we hit the books now, our dreams will naturally follow suit. But as people change, so do their destinies--our futures throb to the cadence of our own lives, held to the rhythmic strum of our actions and decisions. 

Ask your professor, your parent, the lonely man in the supermarket: Are you the person you always hoped to be? Are you pursuing the life you dreamed of? Listen. How many of them chased dreams of ballerinas or baseball players? It's a desolate life when one locks their dreams away. It's a void, an abyss, an absence of hope. An existence forsaken.

I hope someday my passion and my career intersect, and what I love is in perfect equilibrium with what I do.

So for now, I guess I'll get back to daydreaming. For now, I'll study hard and believe that making the grades will be redemption for my soul-searching. On those tortured evenings when this is not enough, I'll strap on my hiking boots and content myself with a starless Louisiana night, miles away from my heart.