"I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all"
             -Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now

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I’ve been sitting in front of this screen for countless minutes, trying to adequately construct the correct string of words to encapsulate these past four years. I guess I’ll begin with school… IT’S FINALLY OVER!!! I completed my bachelor’s degree and graduated (Summa Cum Laude) on April 27^th. I thought that a week later, I would feel sweet relief and freedom. I wasn’t prepared to still feel rundown, stressed, sick, and exhausted. I feel like I’m in the eye of a hurricane and have so little time to figure everything out before the winds and rain begin again.

I’ve graduated with honors, I’m moving out of my moldy home that’s nearly destroyed my lungs, and I left my job because of an abusive new director. The world should be my oyster! I should look at my broadened horizon and feel nothing but hope! Instead, I long to hide away from my world and the greater world in which it revolves. I desperately want to heal from the constant whips, dips, turns, and hills of the rollercoaster I spent four years pretending to navigate. Only, I can’t seem to find rest – and trust me, I’m trying.

Within the past week, I’ve been asked a dozen times about my “plan” and how I need to start thinking about my “plan.” Of course, this plan includes the status quo Monday through Friday drudgery we’ve all come to accept as life. I understand it’s American culture to work like dogs, barely enjoy the years, and then try to rest or live it up once we’re old and achy. But I can’t wait twenty more years to truly enjoy my time, my talents, my hobbies, my body, my friends, MY LIFE. And so, I’m taking time off.

I find it interesting just how many people are uncomfortable with me taking a month off because those same people didn’t seem to mind when my busy and ordered life was suffocating me and making me mentally and physically ill. I’m learning that when others view my life, they often miss the most essential part – me. I need a plan beyond signing another lease that traps me in a place I never wanted to live; starting another position at a company that may or may not value me or my work; or creating a schedule that remembers every obligation except self!

For the first time, after years of food service industry and cultural brainwashing, I’m coming to terms with the fact that I am not my job. I am not the information being pumped into me by academia. And I’m certainly not the dreams, wishes, expectations, and demands poured onto me by myself and others. God and Popeye the Sailor proudly pronounced, “I am what I am.” Who I am is clear, but it’s time to figure out what I am beyond: overachieving, misdirected devotion, relentlessness, and fears of both failure and success.

Is it possible to be you, like all of you, while surviving professional and economic pressures? How many concessions are too many before you become diluted and washed out? Do your achievements matter when you can’t remember the last time you felt healthy or happy? Can I somehow reconcile both sides – who I am with what I am? I don’t expect to have the answers to any of this before my month’s respite is up. But I’m kinda proud of myself for allowing this time to evaluate and discover.