The Revelation

Hello, ducklings! I hope your Friday is going well. Before I get to the nitty gritty of today’s post, here’s the obligatory awkward Friday fitness pic.

On a related note, my workout is going well. I have added more sit-ups and push-ups, and I can now hold a plank for two minutes! That doesn’t seem like much, but three weeks ago, I could barely do one minute, and progress is progress (no matter how small). Little victories like these are always exciting, especially if you’re impatient like me and you demand instantaneous results. I might not have the body of a Greek god yet, but damn it, I can hold a plank longer now than when I first started!

All right. So, today I want to share something that probably seems blindingly obvious to the rest of the world, but didn’t quite hit me until today.

I can do whatever I want.

Let that sink in for a moment. Read that sentence once, twice, seven times. Allow the words to imprint themselves upon your mind grapes.

I can do whatever I want. Seriously! I just realized today that I have a whole life ahead of me, and a whole world surrounding me, and there’s no one to tell me what I’m allowed or not allowed to do. (Well, except for the law, but 1. most of what I want to do is perfectly legal, and 2. I suppose I can still break the law if I want to—I just have to pay the consequences. I am not encouraging anyone to break the law, however!)

I know this seems really, blatantly obvious. Like, duh. Seriously. As soon as you turn 18 and leave your parental units behind, the world is your oyster. We all know that. But do we really get it?

See, I’ve lived most of my life trying to live up to certain standards and expectations—not just those imposed by my parents, but also those imposed by society. I started breaking free from those chains around last year sometime and ultimately made the decision to take a break from college to explore the “real” world a bit earlier than planned, but it’s been several months and I’ve just now realized that there are so many paths open to me, so many choices available. I can move to Cali if I want. I can move to another country if I want. I can save up money and spend it on ridiculous things, or I can give it to whatever charity I choose. I can use my days off to sleep in and goof around, or I can use them to do something constructive and meaningful. I can spend my time learning to play guitar and understand ASL and make art and sing and read and all those other awesome things that make life worth living. (I’ve been doing that quite happily since leaving college behind, ha ha.)

Why didn’t I understand this earlier? Why didn’t I make the connection as soon as I was a legal adult that I had around seventy years of life left and I could spend them doing whatever I wanted? Why did I automatically think, “okay, time to adhere to the same old plan that every other person my age is following.”

It scares me that it took so long to reach this conclusion. I would like to think I’m just a bit slow on the uptake (don’t get me wrong, I totally am), but I suspect that I’m not the only one who spent several years laboring under the delusion that there are only a few paths available and that you can’t really do what you want—you have to do what’s expected. Even after I took the plunge and withdrew from OU, nervous as a cat and terrified of living on my own, it took me three or four months to grasp the magnitude of my decision to forsake the well-worn path.

Anyway, this realization has pretty much brightened my entire month. I don’t think I have words that can adequately describe the happiness bestowed upon me by this revelation. All I can say is that you have to remember that only one person can really tell you what to do. Only one person can really rule your life and make you follow a certain direction. Obviously, that person is you, and if you don’t like where you are right now, you have to start fixing what you don’t like about yourself.

See y’all next week, angel faces.

The Introduction

Hey!

Okay...so you know that thing where out of nowhere, you suddenly realize that you're 20/30/50 years old? And your life is steadily slipping out from between your fingers? And you have all these dreams and big ideas, but you've not actually done anything to achieve them? And you've let all these people tell you that you can't do what you want, that you have to do this, or that, or this other thing?

So you realize this, right? You get it. You're like, "well, crap, I'm growing older every second and I haven't done even a fourth of what I really want to do." So what are you going to do about it?

Well...I don't know what you're going to do about it. I mean, I barely know what I'm going to do. But I have a vague idea. Let me tell you.

Okay, so first I should introduce myself. I'm Jordy Branam (my real name is Jordan but I've gone by the family nickname for a while now). I'm a twenty-year-old guy living in the glorious city of Norman, Oklahoma. And for the past two years, I've been attending the University of Oklahoma. On the surface, my college record looks pretty freaking slick: 3.9 GPA, member of the Honors College, recipient of several prestigious scholarships, blah blah blah. Don't get me wrong--I'm pretty proud of my accomplishments. I don't mean to knock the hard work I've put into achieving those things.

However, about a month ago, I officially withdrew from OU, with absolutely no intent of returning. I'm sure some of you have just gasped in horror and spilled your beverage dramatically. "What?" you shriek in dismay. "You...you dropped out?"

My answer, of course, is a resounding "yes."

"But...why?" you ask, incredulously.

Well, that is a post for another time. I have a lot to say about the so-called "college experience," and believe you me, I intend to say it. But not now. Right now, I'm still letting you know what I'm doing. So, as I was saying, I dropped out of college (for a multitude of reasons, upon which I will elaborate in the near future). Now, it's the summer of 2012, and I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to achieve my dreams.

The thing is, I have a very acute sense of my humanity. I know quite well that I could die any day--any second, really--and that my time here is limited. I absolutely have to take advantage of the time I have left and do what really makes me (and hopefully others) happy. All around me, I see people just plodding through their lives, living paycheck to paycheck, wishing desperately that they could be doing something else. But why?

Seriously. Why all the misery? Why all the unhappiness? You say you hate your job, your major, your life, whatever. Why not do something about it?

You have a million answers, of course. "The economy is horrible right now." "The major I really want will never get me a job." "This is what normal people do." And the list goes on...

Do you know what all of that really boils down to? One word. I'll give you a clue: it's four letters long and starts with the letter "f." (No, not that word--although I have to say I'm a big fan of that one, ha ha.)

The word is fear. We're all scared. We're afraid to try something new, to quit our jobs, to move, to change our majors, to drop out, to give something else a try for a while. What are we scared of? Well, that differs from person to person. Maybe you're afraid you're not smart enough to do something else, or that you don't have the right set of skills. Maybe you're afraid of what your friends/family/demon overlords will think. Maybe you are just afraid that it won't work.

Guess what, my ducklings? I am done with fear. I'm done letting it rule my life and dictate my actions. I'm doing what I really want to do. I have a lot of dreams, you know. I want to sing and write and illustrate and make money and build a paradise on earth, for starters. And that's just the beginning of a long list. But the point is...I'm getting started on these things now. One of my dreams is to have a blog with thousands of visitors, so today I sat down, made an account, and began working.

I would like it a lot if you came along for the ride.