you've dreamed a thousand dreams...none seem to stick in your mind

I need to stop watching the Food Network. I've spent a significant amount of the evening watching various cooking shows and competitions, and now all I want to do is open up a bed and breakfast and cook all sorts of delectable things for customers who, in my dreams, will be gracious and grateful rather than demanding and obnoxious.

Speaking of dreams, I have dozens of them, stretching away into a fathomless void where they all float about, periodically to be reexamined before being cast away to darkness again. Every day, I seem to 'discover' what I'm meant to do with my life, only to realize the next day that I want something else, or forget a dream entirely because of the pressures of modern life. Tonight, I remembered the stunning, earthshaking revelation that I had in a rainstorm at Fatehpur Sikri. As you, dear reader, may remember, Fatehpur Sikri is a ruined citadel near Agra, India, built by a Mughal emperor and abandoned after his death due to an extreme water shortage. As I sat under an archway, avoiding the rain and the endless stream of annoying tour-guides, I contemplated a gorgeous city that was doomed from the start by the arrogance and poor planning of the ruling class. All civilizations eventually end, whether by falling to the barbarians howling in the wilderness or by facing a long, slow decline into obscurity. Then, I began to wonder if this fate will be met by America in my lifetime.

While I don't think that America will actually cease to exist before I do, at this point it seems inevitable that the lifestyle of the Plains and the American West will fade away. There will probably always be pockets of people living in the interior of our continent; and I hope that people will gradually realize the insanity of living expensively on the coasts when there is so much space and freedom (cheap at twice the price) between the Appalachians and the Rockies. But, towns like my hometown are dying; family businesses have been replaced by dollar stores, and the inducements for me to return are limited to a) family and b) cheap land.

So, while I was sitting in a hot, rain-soaked courtyard halfway around the world, I felt that my destiny was to travel around America, documenting the lives of small towns before they disappeared forever. I felt this so strongly that I was almost moved to tears (which is quite the feat for me, since tears are rather rare in my world). Then, I promptly forgot about it and moved on with my life.

Am I destined to undertake this project? Or will I follow one of the other myriad dreams that have floated through my mind over the years? Going to Ireland will put off any decisions in an enjoyable, satisfactory way, but someday I will have to choose a dream (or dreams) and follow them. Here's a partial list; if I'm still aimlessly blogging in a year without doing anything to follow any of them, please hit me.

The List:
1) Travel around small-town America and write witty, incisive travelogues/documentaries
2) Write a series of romance novels
3) Write the Great American Novel
4) Move to Kyrgyzstan or some other Central Asian country
5) Seek employment with the Foreign Service
6) Learn Russian, French, and German
7) Plan and host the party of the century


This is all a fight against the 'sensible' things that I could do with my time (and likely be wildly successful at):

The Anti-List
1) Get an English Ph.D.
2) Get a joint law/business degree and go into international consulting
3) Get a business degree and re-enter corporate America
4) Snare a man and raise some adorable kids

Regardless of which options I choose to pursue, it's clear that my interests lie in the realm of literature--but I'm afraid that I won't be successful and that I won't be able to feed myself. Mostly, though, I'm afraid that if it doesn't work out, I'll have to admit that it was all just a dream, and that seems like a devastating turn of events.

Based on the movie I saw today, though, I don't want to risk living with my parents for more than a few transitional weeks at a time. I saw 'Failure to Launch', which was unfortunate since a) I went alone and b) the movie was terrible. I just wanted to see a movie and didn't particularly care that none of my friends wanted to go, but I was unduly punished by having to see extended shots of Terry Bradshaw's naked ass. Why couldn't Matthew McConaughey do the nude scene? Instead, they gave the nude scene to an aging sportscaster. Alas. Matthew McConaughey was still hot, but his character was a little obnoxious, and I've decided that I really dislike Sarah Jessica Parker. I don't think she's pretty or fresh enough to be a romantic comedy lead, and her voice is one of the most annoying things I've heard in a really long time. I will likely change that judgment after I've listened to my brother's country music on the way home, but for now, Sarah Jessica Parker's voice is the worst thing to pass through my tympanic membranes in quite awhile.

Okay, all of this is a moot point for now, and it's time for me to go to bed. After my father told me that I should post every day, I shall endeavor to post more often in the future. You can probably expect a post every day while I'm in Ireland, but my life in California is sufficiently boring to make blogging seem pointless. However, I apologize for my hiatus, and will attempt to be more diligent in the future.