For some reason, springtime and sunshine make me want to listen to The Mountain Goats. It's happy nostalgia.

As any college student and young adult knows all too well, people expect you to have a life plan. Every time I have to make small talk with an adult acquaintance, at family parties or at the hair salon or in the grocery store, the conversation follows the same course: Where do you go to school? What are you studying? What do you hope to do with that major? What are you going to do after college? What is your life plan? Obviously you must have a life plan because your parents are paying an ordinate amount of money to send you to university. You're not a kid anymore. You should know what you want to do with your life.

And every time I have to take part in this conversation another part of my soul dies a very painful death. I have to explain that no, I'm not studying journalism anymore. I don't know what to do with my life. An English major is pretty much useless. I don't have a life plan. I don't even have a plan for next year.

I can talk about Shakespeare and Early Modern philosophy until the cows come home. Ask me about the theories of Derrida or Foucault and I'll have plenty to say. If you want to discuss the history of theater and the theological implications of performance, I'd be happy to oblige. But ask me about my life and I'd be at a loss for words.

Sometimes I feel as though I'm living in a perpetual state of "not-not." I am not not an adult. I am not not living my life. I am not not present.

I am here but I am not here completely. Nothing is certain. I feel as thought I exist in a continual state of ambiguity. I can't be me but I can't not be me. My future is a hazy form on the horizon. It exists but it doesn't have a shape.

And so when someone asks me what I want to do with my life, I can't answer with any certainty. I may be 20 years old, a college student and a young adult, but I don't know what my life is at this moment and I don't know what it is going to be in the next moment. I exist in not-knowing.



But I still exist in the real world. For example, today I spent the afternoon wandering around campus. I don't have classes on Thursdays and so I had the day free to myself. There were several errands I had to complete but I had the whole day available. I met a few friends and chatted about classes and our weekend plans. It's a lovely mystery, how just a day of sunshine and pleasant weather can lift the spirits. Everything seems sweeter. The day can be something to be cherished and enjoyed instead of just another day to be bitterly endured. Sometimes the world isn't such a horrible place.