Attitude-adjusted Priorities

The problem with going anywhere is that you must inevitably return to where you started from. This is almost certainly the case unless you decide to get married there or perhaps become entrenched in business. Maybe you stay for a year, maybe 2, perhaps 5, but reprogramming the mind to exist 'back home' is something that is rarely escapable. Take visas, for example. You get one for about a year and sink comfortably into 12 months of 'les alternative choisirs'. Then ba-blam, you're done all of a sudden, uprooting yourself and folding back into a position of "Arrgghhhh! Real life!". This is slightly different from grade school, where I can remember 'home time' as one of my favourite subjects.

Life's amenities are often presumed to lie in relation to money and power (which for many young(er) people translates into meaning a good job and a desirable mate), but then there are those times when the opportunity to expand provincial horizons trumps even the sturdiest of claims stating otherwise. However, all of such experiences are fleeting; they are time-oriented and subject to the inconsistencies involved in a) getting older and b) growing more responsible towards c) professionalism in a d) climate of social and proprietary discourse. E), we're left wondering what the hell we did with the last 5 years of our life and remark how awkwardly close we are to approaching the age of 30. No time to lose, carpe diem, free your mind...and then reality sneaks up with a clever backfist of 'get a job, pilon'. Clearly, something was lost in the translation between living life as a free agent and becoming an independent and successful citizen.