Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

It's said that the greatest forms of expression and creativity come in a person's 20s. The oldest member of The Beatles was 29 when they broke up (Ringo). David Bowie was 26 when he made Aladdin Sane. F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby when he was 29, but developed the story over the course of two to three years.
Perhaps it is the untempered idealism of youth that drives artists, writers, poets, and painters to express themselves so fully through their work; after all, this is the age on a bridge, leading from the innocence of childhood to the weathered extremes of adulthood. Perceptions of freedom and possibility narrow as we get older and as we decide on how we want to spend the rest of our lives. It's natural; we do, after all, have to pay the bills and fill our bellies somehow.
This is why I say to everyone in their 20s, stop. Look around you. Where are you? Where did you think you'd be a year ago, five years ago? Where did you want to be? Where do you want to be?
Obviously, not everyone will be the same. Some people will be hard at work on their passions. Those people should be admired and saluted; oftentimes it's grueling and sometimes it won't pay enough to support them, but they are trying. They are putting their best effort into it and they are working towards some tangible goal, and they will do anything to get there. Maybe they are trying to become professional actors, maybe they are trying to develop a business from the ground-up; whatever the case, they are alive.
And then, there are the lost. The wanderers. The uncertain. Those who find a job to get by and settle so far into that job that they become the change between the couch cushions. Day in and day out those jobs are the same- you know exactly what you will be doing in a year, five years, ten years. For some people, that's OK. If you need a stable paycheck and if it can help fund your life outside of work, then by all means, keep going.
But if you're in a job like that and you hate it, then why not move on? Why not push out, dive into something different, take a class, change careers, go abroad, join the Peace Corps? Use that money you saved and do something amazing with your time. If there was a passion that you had and suddenly you no longer have time for, why not delve right back into it? There are millions upon millions of unexplored possibilities in the world to end whatever doldrums might plague you; why not go for it?
I know of a person who insists that they want to become a journalist. They want to talk about entertainment and politics and report on whatever is late and breaking in the hour; however, when it comes to leaving the job towards which they are decidedly apathetic, they waver. The uncertainty of not having an income for even a brief period, or of getting lower pay, seems daunting.
But, money tends to come when you're good at something. And the more you do that thing, the better you'll be at it. Even if it's difficult in the short term, you at least learn how to turn difficult into intermediate.
So, why all this inspirational whatsit? Because I'm jumping right off my job and starting something completely, unfathomably new, and goddamn am I excited that I have no idea what I'll be doing in a month, a year, three years. The uncertainty just means that anything is possible, and infinite possibilities means infinite discovery. There is nothing more tantalizing.

That's all for now,
Das Flüg

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