Looking for Trees, Waiting for My Forest

So, just because I haven't posted in a while doesn't mean that I haven't been writing. Lately, I've been starting pieces that I thought would be posts, only to find them incredibly too long, too personal, or just very poorly written. I think that I just experienced some clarity that, if I can stay on task long enough to write about it, might just make sense.


As I look forward to my official Peace Corps invitation, I've been giving some serious thought about all of the other experiences/adventures that I'd like to check off of the list. I have a life list, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking more about those experiences that, when you're older and perhaps in the middle of some sort of career, you can look back and smile knowingly. You know that it was these experiences, these singular opportunities that you took full advantage of, that made you into the person that you had become.

Though my life to this point hasn't exactly exemplified such an attitude, I see myself as someone who needs to go, see, and experience. I'm beginning to look at life more as a collection of experiences than a progression of them. Rather than embarking on adventure/stage/step "A," simply because it logically and necessarily leads to adventure/stage/step "B," for example, I'd like to see what "R," "F," or "Q" are like. That is to say, there are numerous experiences that I'd like to have, and I no longer feel as though they have to fit into some neat little steps-to-prepare-me-for-a-career box. When I do discover what it is exactly I want to do, I will no doubt look back and appreciate the role that these various experiences played in getting me there, but the means may not make alot of sense until the end is realized.

The "clarity" that I referred to was from a quote from an article about Leslie Feist, known simply as Feist to most people. When discussing the way her career just sprang up and took off rather organically with the success of her track "Mushaboom," and where her life might lead, she simply said "I'm looking for the trees. I'm waiting to find my little forest somewhere, and I just haven't figured out where it's going to be yet." I love the way that she turns the whole "not seeing the forest for the trees" saying on its face. I'm trying to appreciate and make the most of the trees, knowing that in time they will make up my little forest.