Some people call it finding yourself.

I like to think we go through life making new discoveries about ourselves until the day we breathe our last breath. 

We all grow and mature and become someone wiser.  Every experience that we go through molds us.  Every loss, every challenge, every accomplishment.. every moment gets us to who we are today.

Before I start to sound too much like a motivational speaker, I'll supplement this blog post with a little revelation I've had about myself.  It's like I woke up and realized "where I'm at".  I'm not sure where I'm supposed to be, but I feel like this is where I am, and in that sense you have to make the best of it and not take anything for granted because there isn't much time we are offered in this world.   Life poses a lot of stress, a lot of day-to-day things we simply HAVE to get done to survive.  If we were all set in life and had no worries in the world, I'm not sure what you would find yourself doing.  Would you be any happier than you are now?  Would you feel more or less accomplished than the position you are at, here in this very moment?

For the first segment of our lives, as babies, toddlers, and children... we grow up at the same level.. the things we have on our minds are very self-centered, as they should be.  As kids, we are truly unaware of what the world has in store, so our naive perspective combined with our daily experiences shape our personalities.  That mini-version of us is a foundation of who we are today.  That's why people always stress the importance of parenting and guiding children properly, (although who is to say what way is proper), because that person will eventually blossom into an adult.

Then the majority of us go through similar patterns, we become educated, advancing one grade to the next.  We all have our shares of favorite teachers, disciplining, getting approached by bad influences, attending dances, taking tests, and a good percentage of us graduate eventually from these confusing days we call highschool.  We form friendships, we are forced to do group projects, and we learn things like algebra, which we wonder 20 years later, how much of it we really apply in a real world environment.  Surprisingly, for myself, cross multiplication to figure out ratios of items has come in real handy.

At any rate, then there are those of us who proceed on to college or the next level of education of some sort, and our peers in that environment are still "on the same page".   We all have parents who are waiting for us to come home on weekends or holidays, siblings, part-time jobs, and the occasional all-nighters to cram for that excruciating final.  Been there, done that.

Once you depart that comfort zone, that reality where you still haven't really matured enough to understand the painstakingly crazy responsibilities that lie ahead, that's when everyone lands on different pages of the book.  For a long while, you've always been going forward and the characters in your story flip through the pages at the same time.  Your friends and you are always involved in the same chapter so you get one another.  It's not merely about having things in common, it's about having the same agenda.

After you hit twenty-one, that's when you throw the guidelines out the window.  Some people skip forward to the advanced chapters and get married right away, others decide to take a break and travel (lucky them), some continue their education, and others just get their first entry-level job and now are excited to go to their first orientation and come to use the phrase "What's for lunch?" more often than not.

One of my best friends from college recently made this comment:  "As much fun as we have with our single friends and just married ones. There is so much more in common we have with our friends with kids".

And I saw this in their eyes already.  I knew my married-parent-couple besties were already down that road by the gleeful look in their eyes when like-minded married-parent-couples would gather together.  It's like there is a common thread that only they can understand as people who have settled down and are responsible for a beautiful family.

That sparkle in my friend's eye as she would proudly hold up her daughter's photo, and say, "even Blane says that my daughter isn't like the others, she's a special one."

I can't relate since I don't have any offspring of my own at the time, however I can feel that warm fuzzy feeling she is giving off about the pride and joy in her life.

We're the same age.  But I've realized age is nonsense I'd like to throw out the window.  It's something that's stamped on your drivers license, or filled out at the doctor's office, but after that, age becomes relative.  I've forever felt that I'm an adult stuck in a teen's body.  Perhaps I'm in denial that I'm getting older.

My point is, as we become adults, our mental state differs across all individuals regardless of age.  Some of us are already settled down and have someone to come home to at the end of a long day at work.  There are others who have carefree single lives seeking to get their drink on and party hearty once the weekend comes around.

I've recently discovered I'm at neither ends of that spectrum, but wading somewhere in the middle.  I'm past the stage where I don't feel the need to go to a pool party in Vegas and get so drunk by 3 o'clock in the afternoon that I have to pass out.  Yet I'm not quite at the stage where I feel like I want to be changing someone's diaper or picking someone up from school either.  I'm still in adventure-mode, I want to travel if time and budget permits.. and even if it means exploring my local area, I'm all about that.  But I also relish in the most simple things in life too, like watching a simple-minded independent film or going out to the Dodger game after work.  And food.  What is it about our generation that has become so Yelp-dependent, and makes everyone a self-proclaimed foodie? 

It's not that I don't have something in common with all my friends and the people I choose to surround myself with.  It's just that I feel we enjoy ourselves a little more when we find ourselves with people who just so happen to be on the exact same page, and chapter of our life-novel.  It's not to say that my married friends and friends who have kids don't know who I am.. they KNOW me like the back of their hand.  They can predict when I'm about to drop something on the floor, or I'm frantically looking for my phone, or how I might leave something at home if they don't remind me.  These are the people who know me best.  It's just a part of life.

Another friend of mine long ago told me, "as you age, you start to cut out the excess fat in your life."  I don't think it's necessary to cut one another out, but it's just finding your own space and making the most use of your valuable time.  If you're a freshly married newlywed couple, then you have a completely new life ahead of you as one unit.  If you're a couple who is pregnant for the first time, you are in a babies world.  If you're a couple who already has a beautiful family, this is your world together. 

I further told my friend who is married and has kids, "As a single person, I have the mindset where I'm thinking, I may die tomorrow, so what is something new I can try today?  And as a person who is already settled down, you may be thinking, I may die tomorrow, so will my wife and kids be taken care of?"

That's the difference.  It's not to say I don't want to be taken care of or taking care of someone else.  It's not to say I wouldn't want to be settled down one day.  But I'm OK with where I'm at right now.  I just wish I had a partner in crime to fulfill some of my non-stop adventures but at the same time, some of my single friends ARE my partner in crime right now.  I could use a male companion though, but he must be someone who wants to spend time with someone as awesome as me.  I feel like plenty of singles out there have plenty to give, but they like to test the waters out and shop around until they find the right one.. which I guess is a good thing because you never want to settle just to settle.  Yet, at the same time, you have to be careful because if you close your eyes on opportunity too long, the ship may set sail and leave for good. 

Even if there's a possibility I am fond of someone at the moment, I'm frightened for a lot of reasons.  The largest reason is my fear that I'm not good enough for someone who is particularly great.  In my mind, I'm effing awesome.  I'm the creme de la creme.  But once I start liking someone, the apple of my eye is elevated to a pedestal that I feel is harder for me to obtain.  As a defense mechanism, I buckle down and I push friends-mode to suppress showing my feelings for anyone.  That, especially, when your own friends poke fun at you or call you out on your behavior.  It's that dreaded feeling of, "it's written all over my face, isn't it?"

We are all still writing our individual stories.  I'm a writer, I can click the keys on my computer at my pace and make the characters in my story do whatever I want them to.  But in the story of life, only so much is under your own control.  The rest of the plot sort of unfolds by itself.  At least for now, I've found the page I want to be at.  We'll see if the right characters join my chapter.  Wherever you are in your story, make the most of it! To be continued...