wanting...

i came home tonight and got online because the fifteenth is technically the last day to pay my seat deposit for law school. i decided this was the best place to go weeks ago, so why have i been waiting all this time? this is a good question. there are lots of good questions in life, and it seems obvious that the thing that makes them good is that they're hard to answer. i logged on and put in all my information, and for some reason i just couldn't click on that little button to confirm. i started crying. and then i cancelled and thought to myself, "i can do it tomorrow." i've been thinking that for a while now. why can't i just do it? the truth: because i don't really want to.

i've recently been forced to deal with some realizations about myself. even when i manage to figure out what it is that i want, i seldom just go do it or go out and get it. i think about it, and weigh my options, and (over-)analyze the situation until i'm convinced that it's impossibly out of reach, and then i give up. the other day i had a sample of something i really wanted, and almost forgot that i already knew i couldn't really have it. like test-driving a car that costs more money than you'll earn in a lifetime. you know you can never have it, but just sitting there, being there, smelling it, feeling the accelleration and pretending it's yours just for a few minutes, just so you'll know what it's like. and then you have to take it back and hand over the keys, and walk away. you'll always have the experience to look back on, but sometimes wonder if it would have been better to leave well enough alone, so that you wouldn't have to know how great what you're missing out on really is.

a couple of days ago i was talking to my roommate andie and she asked me why i was going to law school. she said that in the eight months we've lived together she's never heard me give anyone a straight, solid answer to that question. i gave her the best explanation i could muster, but it wasn't really a reason. there wasn't any description of how i wanted to be or do anything specific, or how this decision will get me there. not that i haven't had moments when i've been excited, or felt like it was the right thing to do. but more and more it seems like i'm just trying to hang on to the memory of those moments and trying to reassure myself that i'm not making the most haphazard, desperate, and costly mistake of my life.

but, as i've been told, i'm tough as nails; so when it comes right down to it, i'm sure i can make myself do what i have to, even if i don't want to. i'll hand over the keys to the aston martin, and walk to the bus stop. so, in about 23 hours, 4/15/07 at 11:30 pacific time, i'll finally be pushing that little button to sign my life away. law school, here i come. in about three years i'll be ready to start my profession as the worst-paid non-practicing lawyer who ever joined up to work at a non-profit org and tried to make america a better place, sacrificing what she wanted for what she ought to do. not that it's a sacrifice when you couldn't ever have it to begin with... i'll stop trying to make something out of nothing and take what i can get. but that doesn't mean i have to want it... which is good since i don't...

or maybe i'll just run away to vegas to be a lounge singer...if such a thing even still exists... i know a lot of old showtunes...