“The Road Less Taken…”
…is the road that I hardly travel.
Y’know, the road where everything seems to be on the up and up and there isn’t a bottom to be pulled out from under you. I haven’t really looked at my options life-wise for a good clear minute (mainly because financial and personal issues get in the way). But last night, after a chance encounter with one of my former teachers, my face and my mind clearly got to thinking.
What if?
What if around Fall 2006 I didn’t step into that mouse trap and stayed focus on nothing more than school and working that crappy job with my uncle cleaning up dealerships and banks and various other buildings instead of trying to gain a shitload of friends and hardly go to class? But then again, I probably wouldn’t have met the people I have met or get into the trouble I did get into. It’s a win/lose in a way – I lose the memories I had then and instead trade for some new ones.
I understand that life is supposed to teach you things, that you’re supposed to go through trials and tribulations in order to build character but I’m sick of building up things when I self destruct and have to rebuild all over. I would want to pile up all the bad decisions I’ve made in the past three years and kick them square out of my life but I can’t. They’re stuck with me like a parasite, unable to be removed because I will somehow relieve them.
Maybe that intervention a month or two ago had done some good on me because I needed to hear the voices of my friends who had personally saw my own self destruction, my selfish choices that made sense to me when they made no sense to everyone else. I’m grateful in that regard. I’m also thankful for being on probation (wtf, I know) because it’s shown me that I’m not a predicate thinker, that I’m not willing to submit myself to this shameful lifestyle and I would rather pull a degree out of my ass instead of possibly a 6×9 cell or even worse, my mother trying to pull me out of a casket thinking her only son can come back.
If it wasn’t for 6,000 dollars – my August to December would be set on school and work. No more and no less. But now I have a choice of my own – do I try to find a way to compile that money and re-attempt UH in January (a little too late to do this upcoming semseter) or do I at least grab ahold of a counselor, see what classes I can take and go to HCC for a little while until I build up?
What scares me about that second option is that I’m looking around at everyone else, and they’re seniors already – they have their internships and get to see the rest of the country while I’m not necessarily stuck here but I’m unprepared for the world around me.
So what can I do, besides take the road I never take – the one where success is determined by hard work and a little bit of luck?
Avoid the forks.
Brando
EIC of Day & A Dream, Brando has written for such publications as DJ Booth, Refined Hype & the Houston Press. Wrestling enthusiast, sneaker addict, sports junkie and certified cake eater. Follow him on Twitter: @_brandoc
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