The things that keep me awake at night

So now I'm restless. It's easy when you're working and every moment of your time is spent busy or asleep in preparation for the chaos. But when things slow down, that's when your brain speeds up and all of a sudden reality crashes into you at the equal but opposite velocity that you've been going, and you realize that things aren't the way they're supposed to be. You're working and making money, in other words making that fictitious "living" that your parent or guardian has been preaching to you ever since you've moved home, and you feel accomplished in the fact that you're not a total waste of space. But you still are. You're not exactly who you're supposed to be. Perhaps my dreams and aspirations out-do my actual being, but there's a giant (and maybe complete) part of me that thinks that everything I'm doing is wrong. If I don't value money in the classical sense then why am I wasting my youth making it? I know you need money to survive in this world but where's the imagination in that? Oscar Wilde once quoted for the internet "Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a serious lack of imagination". I don't lack in imagination, that's for damn sure: I spend the majority of my life living in a world that's completely made up in my own brain, but as far as actual action on the part of that imagination is concerned, I could use a little upgrade. I want and I plead for some flair in my life but I don't go out and get it. If I knew what I wanted I'm sure I'd have it by now, but it's the object of my desire that's evading me at this juncture in time. I'm working with people who can only dream the possible and I want for the impossible, the way a junky needs a fix but all he can find is some asprin: my desire is just out of my reach and instead of really trying for it I'm settling for what's available. I need to fix that. But how? Reach for what I want right now? But my wants change with the weather, and I'm scared of going for what I'm not meant to have. So what do you do? I'm 22 and I'm wasting my youth. Everyone older than I (or those who have luckily figured out what they want at an early age, stupid bastards) tell me that I'm right on track and I'll figure it out soon enough. My sister tells me that when I know I'll just know, the way a person who falls in love just knows for certain on a gut level that it's right. Apparently there's an internal instinct that will kick in and fate will fall into place and the stars will align in my favor and everything will work out just swimmingly. I want to punch people in the groin every time they tell me this. It may be the calm and collected way they present the information, or perhaps just the vague ambiguity of the entire idea itself, but it infuriates me. Of course that's what these people think, they've already figured it all out. They don't have this gnawing, snarling, anxious feeling in the pit of their stomach all day everyday since graduation. Sure sometimes it's dulled, but I can't be high all the time. Sometimes sobriety takes over and the real world butts in and reminds me that I'm doing jack shit with my life, besides getting people drunk or serving them coffee, depending on the time of day and the venue I find myself in. It's all a bunch of rubbish in my opinion, and if this is the path I'm supposed to be on I'd rather forge my own, and make it a major detour at that. I'm sick of sitting on the couch on my days off. I'm sick of waking up dreading the work day. I'm sick of sitting in traffic on the way to a destination that isn't supposed to be waiting for my arrival. I want to understand what I'm actually supposed to do with my time on this wretched planet and I want to know now. If it sounds like I'm whining, I am. Wah. So there. Apparently adulthood has actually set me back about a decade as far as maturity is concerned. And maybe that's a good thing. When I was 12 or even younger I could dream as big as I wanted and I didn't have to worry about what sort of money would fill up my gas tank at the end of the day. All I really had to worry about was impending puberty and whether or not Mom had bought me Lucky Charms for breakfast tomorrow. Fortunately with that scenario Mom actually has bought me Lucky Charms, so I guess I should complain a little less. But unlike 10 years ago, Lucky Charms don't solve all of my problems. I still live with a mother who knows I prefer Lucky Charms, and if that isn't depressing I don't know what else may be (to be honest I know about a trillion things more depressing, but for the sake of this essay let's just pretend my problems are the most dire things in this complicated world. Thanks for the cooperation). I just wish for the sake of wishing that life didn't take so much time to figure out and that perhaps we could understand a little more in a little less time. Maybe that's not the journey I'm supposed to be on, but to channel Forrest Gump, when does destiny give way to actual action? When do we stop letting life direct our lives and we actually start directing life the way we see things going for ourselves? Are we all floating along or do we have a say on where the breeze sends us? And the fact that I am 22 has equally annoying angles: I'm so young still that I have time to waste, but any time wasted is still wasted time and I should be putting every moment to good use, especially while I'm so young. With me there's no point to argue, I apparently have a come back for every angle. This is where my overactive brain leads me at 3am and I find myself awake 2 hours before I have to be up for work trying to figure out why I'm going to work at my job in the first place. If money didn't exist I'd be extraordinarily curious to know what each individual on this planet would be doing with their time. If all that existed was life, independent of any consumerism, how would we live out each day? That's how I want to exist. I want to know what it's like to not feel stress or burdens, to not wish that I had more money or feel stuck somewhere because of a lack of it. If we lived in Utopia, I'd be the Queen, and I'd make sure everyone alive would know the feeling of money-less joy and euphoria. Maybe that's why my imagination takes precedent over any sort of reality that I wake up to: it's more beautiful to live in that world than the one we've created.