A Diary Entry from Nov 12, 01:26, Monday Midnight

Hi. I stumbled across a girl’s picture on my Facebook newsfeed and I commenced my stalking (standard) for the next God-knows-how-long. She’s just a girl I met in an art class in high school...we probably wouldn’t say hi if we saw each other on the street, but I guess that wouldn’t happen anytime remotely soon since she’s in Australia, babysitting, and is liking it there so much that she has extended her trip to 2 years (so it says on Facebook). 

Babysitting for fuck’s sake. And here I am, taking a “break”, which is more like my way of excusing myself from working (cramming) anymore for my essay due on Tuesday about pornography and condoms. Looking at her pictures—gorgeous person, gorgeous country, gorgeous weather—it writes youth all over her timeline. 

Somehow the first question that popped into my mind was, how long is my youth going to last? The second question that followed, just how important is post-secondary education? 

I know the latter is a question I already have a very decided and mature answer for, but why did I still ask myself then? 

Her photos made me think of the photos that were taken last year in Germany, either by me or of me. I looked probably just as youthful, if not even happier. When do I get to do that again? Why is it that I’m not doing it now? Why is it not something like a job, which we slave away but are only preparing for, that I can pursue 24-7? In a city, a country where I find beauty in its land, where the weather no longer even affects my mood, because physically being there is enough to form the foundation of my happiness. I think this might be how Hemingway, Stein, and all those American artists and intellects felt when they all decided to move to Paris in the 1920’s. 

Youth is too short. Youth is what forms and shapes life, because youth means mistakes and experiences, and youth must mean happiness, more or less. So what exactly am I doing here? When I read that she is being a nanny in Australia, I thought immediately of her future—a nanny as a career? But what the hell, why do I assume that because she is spending her beautiful years in Australia, taking care of more beautiful things, she’s only good enough to be doing the same thing twenty, thirty years down the road? Why are we wired to think so far ahead? What about now? We don’t ever make plans for life because “life is what happens when we’re busy making other plans” (pardon the cliché). Why don’t we make more proximal plans for life—proximal happiness, instant gratification, like having a photograph taken of me standing by the ocean, with the Sydney Opera House in the background under a clear, blue sky? Why is “life” always something in the future, where we are supposedly paving a way for? 

I know when I wake up in the morning tomorrow, I will continue working on my essay, and I’m going to continue university on Tuesday, with the logical and coherent answer of the importance of education and how it acts as an investment in what we call the space and time we live in as “life”. Are these current thoughts, then, a momentary weakness? Or a form of epiphanic realization, or some sort of revolution in my so-called plan, possibly changing my so-called future life? Maybe I can apply the same technique I use in determining if I should make a purchase or not on this dilemma: if I’m still thinking about that skirt after a few days of seeing it for the first time, then I will buy it. Similarly, if these thoughts about pursuing and holding onto youth, making use out of it in a way that deems to be the most youthful, the happiest, and the most satisfying persist after a few weeks (in this more serious case), then I’ll pack my bags and run and hide and giggle and live happily and no one will be able to tell me otherwise. What do you think?