Signing Away a Year

So it's real. The contract came in. As good a time as any to start this.

Off to China. Anqing. I don't know anything about it. I don't know any Chinese. I hardly even know how to wash my own clothes.

Kidding.

But now it comes to it, and I have to put my name down on a piece of paper that binds me to my placement in the Celestial Empire for a full year, I feel...

Not nearly as nervous as I should. But I'm sure that'll come. Because I feel woefully prepared for this... undertaking.

Worse, I can't really think of an adequate way TO prepare for it in the next three weeks. There's a lot to be done. I'll have to get a physical. Maybe some vaccinations. A visa. A master card.

Bottom line--I don't really know what I've gotten myself in to. I should be stressed out of my mind. I should be terrified. I'll be completely lost, completely out of any element I've ever been familiar with.

And that's exactly it. I can't wait for those struggles. Not, as it might first seem, because I don't respect them, but because I DO respect them. There is no way to survive this journey without growing into a stronger person. I love that.

I've been grappling with my sense of purpose for more than a decade, ethereal foe that it is, and in all that time I've never been able to find a hold. Perhaps that's because I've spent most of that time preoccupied with sports, or stifled by a cubicle, or wasting about on a couch, or drowning in a bottle of beer.

Perhaps it's because life is meant to be lived instead of merely coasted through, drifted about as if something great is just going to fall into your lap and fix everything.

In the right circumstances, to survive is enough. To endure is enough. But never to coast. Especially not when the world is set before you, not when so many others would take advantage of what you have every day. Someone wiser than I just wished I would DO more, and what else is there, really, that you CAN do?

I don't presume to know what makes life worthwhile, although I have a few ideas. I don't know what makes a person happy. But I do know what makes me unhappy, and that's letting opportunity go to waste, and life pass me by.

Well, here's to doing things. I'm signing a year away.