Twenty Something Panic.

Is there some sort of civil war inside my head that I don't realize?

FINANCE versus FUN.

FAIRYTALE versus REALITY.

SMILES versus SECURITY.

I often take the side of the lackadaisical, the easy going. The live for today, damn the torpedoes, before the devil, way of thinking. But that doesn't mean that I don't see the other side. That I don't understand certain urgencies and emergencies. Yes, someday I won't be young and good looking and cool. Someday I'll be just another ghost in the forest. Someday, in some crooked realization, I'll say to myself, "I wish I worked harder when I was young. I wish I saved more money. I wish I bought a house." Maybe. It's likely, at the very least.

But on the other hand, I have worked hard (although saving money seems to be nearly impossible) for a long time. I find myself making the same argument for my outlook time and time again. That when I am old, and dying in some pastel hospital room, surrounded by nothing but a lifetime of memories, do I want them to be memories of good times, smiles, laughing, and happiness, or the 124,800 hours of work I spent in my life. In case your Googling is weak, that's 14.2 (ish) years of your life straight working. Not sleeping, eating, or anything else. FOURTEEN FUCKING YEARS that you will devote to being miserable. You might say; "Well, I can afford fourteen years, that's not too long." But you'd be a fucking mad man to believe that.

How long are you alive? 60+ years, hopefully. Do you think that when you are breathing in for the last time. When you are seeing the last fucking thing your brain will ever recognize, when the blackness sweeps over you, do you think you might wish you could have had those fourteen years back. To do as you please. Do you think that you might think to yourself; "A lot of that might have been bullshit..."

Maybe.

Dying terrifies me. I happen to enjoy living, as tedious and difficult as it often is. Wasting time terrifies me. I want to be out. Doing shit people aren't comfortable with doing. Because I can. Because why the fuck not? I want to learn everything. I want to see everything. I want to do everything. And spending the best years of my life locked up in misery, working towards shit I don't really care about, some of it things I am vehemently against, well, I'm sorry, that boat won't float. I just can't.

BUT.

I want to be able to eat. I want to be able to pay my bills. Give my children happy lives. I want to be able to afford the things I want to do.

So where is the line? Do I work more to save the money and miss out on a million opportunities (mostly completely not lucrative at all, financially)? Or, do I throw caution to the wind, do my thing, and live that brilliant romantic existence portrayed in our heads by the starving artists of New York, or Paris. The wind surfing drifters of Australia. The eternally young and beautiful. Both seem like lifestyles unsustainable to me. I will work myself into misery, dreaming of the sea. Or, I will live that boundless freedom, only to realize in a few years, maybe longer, that I am a fucking idiot, who didn't know anything.

How do I not waste my life?

I can't fucking win.