Endless Distractions

Hello once again.

As though I didn't have enough things to distract me at work, I felt obligated to add one more. I have really missed blogging. Normally, when away from a blog, I devote myself completely to my journal. Lately though, I haven't been writing at all. It makes me sad to think of all the promises I once made to myself, now broken and forgotten. I truly believed that nothing could stop me from writing.

Yet, here I am, writing for the first time in almost three months, wondering why exactly I had given it up at all. Work. Work got in the way. I had promised myself not to be that person, not to trade in my dreams for money, to always make time for my true passions. I had promised myself not to get sucked into the ideals of this "real world" everyone's always talking about. In the "real world" life is about time management, about business, about money. I wanted my life, my world, to be about art, about passion, about love. Far too often, I can feel that part of me slipping away. My childlike view of the world is fading from me, and I'm left with something distant, something cold.

Monday marks my one year anniversary in this office. A year of my life given to something I'm not passionate about, something I promised myself I would never do, never become. This job has taken over my life. I've allowed it to. I've allowed myself to become the kind of person who spends all of her time at the office, talking about money and business and time management. What happened to the girl who used to spend her afternoons in the park writing under a tree? What happened to the dreamer? Somedays I really miss her.

Yeah, it's nice to be a grown up sometimes. It's nice to have a steady income and a myriad of responsibilities. It's nice to know I'm capable of holding a job and doing it well. It's nice to feel like I'm needed here. It's just that sometimes, I feel like I would give it up in a second for a chance to go sit under a tree and write, or swing at a playground, or just be a kid again. Sometimes I just feel like I grew up too fast. Sometimes I worry that there's no going back now....

I missed a step. I missed this time that people are always telling you to hang on to as long as you can, the infamous "college years." I didn't want that typical college experience, but every once and a while, I wish I did. I wish I had wanted it while I had it. I wish I didn't think so far ahead. I want so desperately to be mature, that I've let the importance of being immature fade from me. And it is important. It's important to just let loose and have fun while you can. Life does move quickly. "Hold on to 16 as long as you can, changes come round real soon make us women and men." Suddenly, you find yourself sitting at an office all grown up with a lifetime of promises, broken and forgotten.

Anyway, I should really get back to work.