Second Thoughts?

Something occurred to me yesterday that I should have focused my thoughts on a long time ago. This is the first time I've been scared to go to Israel. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, though. I'm sitting at home all day, doing nothing, watching television shows on Hulu. I'm way too lazy to do anything and I don't know why. I have so much work to do, work that needs to be done NOW, and I get all tensed up whenever I think about doing it. I'm also turning into a ghost of my mother when she used to live here, doing absolutely nothing during the day and if she had anything she had to do, and I do mean ANYTHING(check if her purse was downstairs, for one "I meant to do that yesterday..."), there was as close to a 0% chance as is possible that she'd do it.

Usually when I speak to my dad on the phone, who lives in Israel, it helps me remember in a meaningful way what it was like for me to be in there. Right now, I feel like a brainwashed prisoner bound by chains that I have the keys to but I'm too cowardly to use. I'm sitting here, wishing that I could go to college next year, but that's because I've crossed a point of no return. It's too late now, all the deadlines have passed. If I could somehow choose, right now, at this moment, to either go to any of the colleges I was accepted into or continue on the plan that I have now, I'm pretty confident I'd continue on this same path.

We live in a world with infinite opportunities and paths to take, and I think we should be staggered by the sheer amount of choices presented to us, except it seems like everyone does what he's supposed to do. What the fuck for? You know when people use that cliche line "don't follow the beaten path, make your own"? I think the saying is fundamentally wrong. I don't think any two people can go down the same path, I think that no matter how typical and run-of-the-mill your life is, it's still your life and you're still going down a path that no one else has.

I'm not trying to sound preachy or like those asshole that publish those self-help books that I feel embarrassed buying because it just screams "I'm never going to do anything meaningful with my life." The stupid books with shit like The 4 Steps to Living Your Life, Now, or Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It's not even to say that these books are all garbage, and that the advice in them is all stupid, it's just that you can't learn how to live your life from a book, and every time I see someone reading a self-help book I immediately think the person is the worst type of American narcissist, a wanteverythinghandedtomebutdon'twanttoworkforit, instant gratification seeking loser that thinks there's a formula to living his life. I know that's not always true, but I can't help but always think that. In my limited experience it seems that if you want to read a book to learn how to live your life, you need to read books that you can absorb life lessons from, like a good novel, not a book with the eight steps to achieving your dream, probably laid out in the same format as the memo that Peter from Office Space got telling him about the new cover on all TPS reports.

I remember Alonzo Mourning came to speak at my school to promote his book, I forget what it's called now because it was offensively boring. He too had his own list of things people should do to be successful or happy or whatever, and he said something like All the success in my life has come from these eight steps, if it wasn't for these eight keys to success I wouldn't be who or where I am-, then he paused, squinted his eyes and looked down at his notes, and said Oh, excuse me, seven steps. It was these seven steps that made me successful, which brings us to step one...

Asshole. How can he attach his name to something he so clearly hasn't invested his energy into? The absence of passion from his entire presentation was almost insulting, especially since he kept referring to his kidney disorder. It came off as him playing that card not cause he actually cared but because he wanted people to take him seriously so they'd buy his book. It reaffirmed my belief that no one and nothing, probably not even God if you drink that KoolAid, can tell you what to do with your life.

It makes it apparent that we're all on our own, there's no right answer and everything important in life requires sacrifice. I feel scared and alone right now. I'm too scared to put the wheels into motion but they already are, and now I feel paralyzed. I sent two cousins of mine in Israel a message on Facebook and neither answered me... did I mention how important the familial aspect of going to Israel is for me? I don't expect to be greeted with a throne atop Mt. Olympus when I get there, but acknowledgment would be nice.

Even still, when I reread parts of this blog or stumble on something inspiring on the internet, or talk to my Dad, I feel a little better. I've listed all my reasons already, but sometimes I need to be reminded. Every single time that I do get reminded, I feel like I found an oasis right before I was going to die of dehydration.

It's been getting worse lately. I wake up in the morning totally scared out of my mind and it takes me a few seconds to figure out why. Then I know, for no reason in particular than I just know that it's about joining the army. My subconscious brings it to the attention of my thoughts in an indescribable way. I know that it's about the army before I before I can form a coherent thought. And when I say scared I mean just a few shades short of full blown terror. Seriously, I'm planning to do something that's supposed to drastically change me for the better, and I'm scared out of my mind. I want to know what kind of dreams I'm having, because I certainly can't remember them, but that can't be too good considering how I feel in the morning. There's simply no way around it: The reason I'm half assing my effort in the planning process is 1% laziness and 99% fear.

Then I realize something. I just graduated high school, and I didn't enroll in any colleges. You know what that makes me? Unemployed. If it wasn't for me going to Israel, I'd be exactly like my mom was before she left. Sitting around all day, not eating, showering, or brushing my teeth. Not socializing and not reading and generally living days that are so devoid of any meaning there's no reason to think I'll have a concrete memory of it even three days later. There would be no significant difference between us except that maybe I'm not mainlining Vodka at 11:30 in the morning to wash down my medications.  So the only thing that's separating me from my mom as far as I'm concerned is that I'm planning to do something with my life. My back is against a wall right now; either I go to Israel or I sit around and do nothing until I reapply to colleges. I actually think it's a good thing that I've gotten to point where it's go to Israel or bust. I actually planned on this happening because I want my life to stop being so fucking boring and in my opinion college is a boring thing to have said that you've done even if it's a lot of fun to be there. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

As fired up as I am right now to get everything in order, I almost certainly won't be when I wake up tomorrow morning in a cold sweat, so to my friends who read this, can you please make sure that I stop being such a little bitch about making these plans and force me to actually go about putting them in motion.