Long time coming

I'm going to Burning Man this year. I've never been before and though my college friends went every year, I was honestly just never interested in it. Tonight I was talking to my cousin about this and how, while I'm pretty bummed I waited this long to go, I always knew it wasn't the right time in my life. I told him that "believe it or not, I used to be way more uptight." He laughed cause I still am but honestly I've changed a lot in the last few years and the main improvement has been my ability to go with the flow. I won't say I'm an expert at this, but I'm so much better at accepting things and adapting. I've changed in a lot of other ways; I think I'm way more fun and open minded and I now love listening to DJs where I used to wonder "why does anyone like techno?" I'm definitely open to more drugs and most importantly, I have a new love for my friends and the world around me that I didn't understand before.

Fuck, I know. What a hippie. The thing about Burning Man is that I have a LOT of people in my life who go and almost none of them are hippies. I've never really understood it and I won't really until I go, but what I do understand already, without even leaving yet, is the feeling of community. Being a part of something. I am already out of my mind excited and the anticipation is killing me. It's all I think about and it's all I want to talk about. Lucky for me, I have about a million people I love who are going so I get to talk about it.

The thing I love most about the fact that I am going is that I finally want to go. I like who I have become. And who I am becoming. I know that I can still be hard to deal with. I've got an attitude and I don't always like when things don't go as planned but I am finally to a point in my life where I don't expect the world to be the way I'm expecting. Every day I discover a new kind of music or that someone I'd judged is actually amazing or that there are parts of me that are really amazing or that people are mostly kind and that life is mostly a fun joke and that I have the world in front of me if I can just figure out what I want to do with it.

So that's my plan at Burning Man. A lot of people say that they use the time there to help find clarity, make decisions, figure out the things in their life they can't figure out at home. I want to spend some time thinking about my future and who I really want to become and then what I might do to become it. Things are good here. I love my friends and I have a decent job at a good company. I don't want for much but I know there's something more to it all and I'm so very excited to find it. I want to take the good parts of me —loyalty and compassion and problem solving and listening and laughter and sincerity and good old fashioned silliness — and use those to overcome the worse parts of me  — cynicism and judgment and insensitivity and jealousy and fear of the unknown — so I can choose a path toward love and contentment and satisfaction. A place where I do something meaningful.

I'm heading toward the dirty thirty and it's coming on fast. When I come back on September 3rd and my heart is full and my body is destroyed, I want to make some choices about what happens next. It's my life. I can do with it whatever I want.