The Future

This past year has been a dandy one. The defining idea of this year, or at least what I will remember in twenty years, was the acquisition of a car. Having a car means a sense of independence and freedom (and happiness) that I never had before. Being dependent on someone to take you everywhere restricts what you can and will do, and having a car lets you do what you want and go where you want. I guess my only regret involving this is not taking more advantage of this situation. In my opinion, life is about doing what you like or what will make you happy, and I maybe could have gotten out more and been more involved, but all around this was a good year. Academically, this year has been a hard one. There has not been extensive work but the material in most classes was much harder to understand than it has been in the past. Not too many people can do well in classes like AP Chem or AP US History without studying, and that includes me. My goal for senior year and beyond is just to have a better handle on my classes and not let one or two of my grades slip until the end of the semester. This next year is my last in high school, so I want it to be memorable.

Playlist: Road Trippin

There is no better time for a playlist than when you are on the road just watching the pavement fly by. A few of these songs I would listen to on no other occasions, but a road trip just would not be the same without them. So, here you go:
 Convoy- C.W. McCall
Nobody except for CW McCall could write an entire album about truckin'. On the same tune, nobody except for me would own this album on vinyl. The vinyl never makes it onto the road, but any self respecting road trip begins with this song.
Truckin'- The Dead
Sticking with the trucking theme, this song cannot be taken off of this list. On a long trip this will probably be played five times. This presents the question: how long can you be on the road listening to this song on repeat before you lose your mind? about 4 hours.
Johnny Cash- Walk the Line
This song like the next is a placeholder in the playlist to represent a much larger selection of this artist that would actually be played. Cash is the best country musician ever and one of the only I enjoy, so I find myself listening extensively to him any time I am on any long trip.
Pink Floyd- In The Flesh (The Wall)
Pink Floyd is the best music ever, and the wall the greatest album. However, it can only be truly enjoyed when listened to in full, and a long trip is perfect for this.
Rush- Freewill
Road trips are the perfect time for nostalgic music, and this is a placeholder for this. My parents' favorite music was rush, so this is personally nostalgic, but I love listening to anything old and classic, because it never gets old, and a long trip is the perfect time to break it out.

Future

            I am only a 17 year old boy, so the amount that I have figured out what I want to do with my future is rather minimal. I have vague and overly romantic views of the future that lies in store for me; they are what drive me to do my best and to try new things. I want to go to college to get a degree in history or anthropology. Then I hope to attend graduate school and get a PHD so that I can become a professor when the right time comes around. I, unlike most, to not think it is some kind of horrific aberration to want to learn for the sake of learning. After graduate school I would like to learn a trade. This summer I am doing a long-term project with a carpenter with hopes that I will gain at least a basis for the kind of skills and appreciation needed for this type of work. I want to build a small house -no a tiny house- movable by trailer hitch and I want to move around the country. You can’t be a professor in one place for four months and then move on, but there’s always a need for skilled craftsmen. I plan to spend the span of just a few months living in each place, never big cities, just small towns. While I stay in these places I want to throw myself into local life, do all that I can to make myself useful, whether it be attending town hall meetings or chopping and hauling firewood for the family whose property I stay on. During this phase of my life I plan on living very modestly, working hard during the day with my hands, giving to others my creations, and earning for myself the satisfaction that comes with that creation. I want to come home at night and sit up in my small, cozy abode, listening to records out of a milk-crate and reading all the Dostoyevsky I haven’t yet. This way life is not conducive to settling down, it is a phase and it’s not that phase. This period, I hope, will give me vital insights into the inner workings of man’s relationships with one another and will bring me to an intimacy with life which I have not yet experienced. Maybe I’ll meet someone I want to marry while I’m out travelling around, and have a son who will be able to live like a young boy should, out of the city and one with the earth. And they’ll be precious to me and I’ll devote myself to them. After this period draws to a close, after I’ve gone from east to west and north to south and tried to see what it is that makes a man a man, I hope to find a job at a small liberal arts school like the one I attended. I want to share with my students the same love that I had for history and mankind’s ways when I was a student. I hope to raise my child to adulthood in this time, a time of relative security and stability. He’ll live the son of an eccentric mother and a more eccentric proffer for a father.  Maybe I’ll have some revelations along the way, maybe I’ll write some great novel, or write the poem that saves the eternal soul of mankind from its imminent self-destruction.,  Most likely I’ll become old and I’ll give back to the students that pass through my classroom what I got out of life. When the time comes to call it quits, when my son is through school and ‘making it’ and I no longer feel that I can contribute to the college what I once had, I wish to retire and move with my wife to India, out in the northwestern country there. To live out the rest of my days in coarse linen robes, eating with my hands and looking back upon a life full of stories.