Quarterlife Crisis?

Ok, I know. I´ve been a bad blogger. I haven´t been keeping up for about a week. Bad Jessica.

But I feel I am in the middle of an identity crisis. To be honest, I am very confused about many things in my life. However, these are things I´ve never been sure of, and one of the reasons I took this year off was to focus on developing a sense of self. I feel secure in my core, but simple things like, what political party do I belong to, are things I simply don´t know. I feel I´m always busy running from step to step in my life that I never spent time figuring out the answers to seemingly negligible, but still defining questions. I´m not going to go into them all now, because I simply don´t have the mental faculty to right now, I´m quite exhausted from my soul searching.

So what is the point of this whole deal? I´m confused. About a lot. And the thing is, I knew I was confused before I came on this trip. And yet, now that I finally have time to confront myself, I find my confusion and lack of knowledge bother me immensely. I have realized I don´t know all that much. I´ve always wanted to go in search of answers. It is the reason I have such a passion for science, and why I for so long wanted to be a researcher. It is why I will go into science even though we all know I have a better head for business. But it´s more than just facts I want to know. It is life. It is to know the art of living.

I´ve begun a knew kind of journal, to simply keep track of all the thoughts that have begun pounding through my head from day to day. I feel my year off is in search of something; but this search has no end-point, no desitination. I simply want to push myself in my search, and not stop. I feel there is so much to be discovered. So much to do and to see and to know. I feel such a raw power in life, in living, and I want to really feel the beauty of it. I think I could do this in medical school or Africa, or anywhere else for the matter, but I have a tendency to get too wrapped up in tangibles.

Now I have come upon the opposite problem. I feel I have become wrapped up inside of me. I feel that I am at the brink of the next stage in my life, and I have so many opportunities! And yet I feel I have so little time. This is one of many contridictions I deal with each day. I often feel I am a walking contradiction, but then I wonder if this is due to my confusion, or the fact that life is simply not that 2-dimensional. This year off, it is time to live. I have spent so much time on a means to an end, I need a way to jar myself back into living.

I feel I´m thinking all these wonderful things, like I´m finally determining what is really important, and yet I´m frustrated by my own mortality. I feel so inadequate to be thinking big thoughts. I feel that I am simply a child trying to feel important, and I´m thinking nothing special, simply ordinary thoughts making up one more coming of age story. I feel so young, so aware of the possibilities for my life, and I feel overwhelmed by them. Whether or not my observations are original, they are new for me, and vital to my growth. And they´re intensity is overwhelming me. The hardest part is I do not wish for an end, for some defining clause, because I don´t believe there is one. There is always more, higher, farther, and I don´t want to impose limits on myself. But that doesn´t mean I don´t struggle with the meaning. But I suppose the meaning is what you make of it.

I´m not sure any of this makes sense, but it seems to be an important part of my journey while here, and I wanted it documented. I promise to post more Chile specific related things soon!