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Birthday Reflections and Update

I just had my 20th birthday on November 9. I joked that I'd have to start acting serious like a "real adult" now. Really, though, I don't believe one ever truly feels like an adult. I have this theory that everyone's just pretending (and some are better at it than others). I don't feel any older, which is no surprise, but things have changed so much since my last birthday. This year, I hope to make some changes of my own. I go through the same routine, and I don't want to sink into the "everydayness" of life. To combat this, I'd love to start volunteering. There's a few options. I have been wanting to start teaching adult literacy, reading for children, and visiting nursing homes. I really want to do something meaningful.

In other news, I have a poem that's going to be published soon in my school's undergraduate literary journal. I'll be sure to post more about that when the issue comes out. I've also written another story that I just submitted to a local Atlanta literary magazine. I'm really hoping that it gets published. They're a lot more selective than my school's journal, so keep your fingers crossed.

Also, I have officially started working as a writing tutor for my school's writing center. I've had about six appointments already. It's something I really enjoy doing and hope to continue in the future.

Who knows what will happen in the future, but I hope to make something meaningful out of this next year.
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  1. Mantan CalaverasNovember 16, 2013 at 8:19 PM

    That's cool, you're cool.

    Volunteering is probably a good idea. There is definitely a temporal acceleration going on, that you only begin to really notice in your mid-20's or so. Time passes faster and Faster. Soon it will be passing too fast.

    I suspect that this has to do with the exponential improvement of cognitive functions in adults. As your brain gets faster and more efficient at processing sensory data and filing it away, and you develop more and more ingrained models of how to do things, you don't have to pay as much attention to your surroundings nor expend as much time figuring stuff out as you did when you were younger, and this causes time to feel like it's passing faster and faster. It also causes you to live, increasingly, up in your head thinking about things instead of observing them.

    A couple activities seem to slow this process of temporal acceleration: Doing new things that you aren't familiar with; interacting with people, and understanding THEIR cognitive processes, which are different from your own; and traveling to new places and doing new things that you aren't used to doing.

    So, this is my advice to you as a young person (I am 30 this year), is to ignore what people may be telling you about your future, the need for education and a career. If you want to be happy in your future, ignore that stuff and do things that you enjoy doing, do them very well, and always negotiate yourself into a position where you get to do new things in new places, and most important always put an emphasis on other people, learning about them, and developing your empathetic abilities. The last is probably the most important one.

    Anyhow, that's my slightly off-topic advice on the subject?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. OddGhoulOutNovember 17, 2013 at 7:01 AM

      What you say makes a lot of sense. Time does pass a lot faster, and I have heard before that it's due to our cognitive processes. You are very insightful! Thank you.

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