Two Steps Back

Well, call me Peter Pan, because I just can't give upthe security of my youth just yet. Brittney Spears had it right (though its sad to admit it) when she belted out the words "not a child, not yet a woman". It's an odd feeling when you realize that the path you have been on for the past few years (and pretty much your entire life) is comming to an end. I would like to say I have found a pot of gold at the end of this "yellow brick road" or at least some crazy man behind some curtain ready to conjur up a plan to take me home in a hot air balloon; but neither of these senarios is the case. Instead I find myself at the side of a highway with cars all wizzing by me. I've never been good a t merging, and so instead I sit at the end of the path and wait for the traffic to clear. The traffic will never celear though, and deep down I know this. What am I waiting for? I may not be good at merging, but I'v alwaays done it with confidence and success in the past, so why not this time? The truth is, Im scared. SDcared that I will never get off the highway, scared that I wont be the same driver once Im on the highway, scared that the highway will hollow me out. I have somehow managed to sneek another summer of minimal responsibility into my life. I LOVE this an appriciate it like never before. Last year I said it was my last "summer of fun", this summer I dont need to say anything because I know it is my last "summer of fun". Others may stop and look at my choice to extend my "Peter Pan" phase and shake their heads. People may think that "man she's doing the same job again? She's going no where fast". To them all I have to say is this:

I have a lot of years a head of me to go everywhere fast. For some there is happiness in advancment into adult years and responsibility at the fastest rate possible. These people seem to race through the inbetween stage to be the first to purchase a house, to get married or have children. This is a race I have already lost. But in loosing this race I have also won. I have won a long Peter Pan phase of life. A phase in which you eat popcicles and slushies after midafternoon tennis matches, and go camping/cottaging with friends. A phase in which laughing at work is as necessary as productivity. Work in this phase is more of a social extention of ones life, than a method to advance ones career, there are work outings, and romances and scandles. Its simple and its fun and its carefree. Sure in the back of your head there are thoughts of what to do next, and pplans for the futre, but theyre for the future, they arnt the present. I am happy with where I am, and while I know that I will eventually have to grow up, I will do what I can to prolong this phase of my life. I value this phase, and happiness enough to sacrafice a few years of large salaries and RRSP contrubutions. If people think Im going no where because I value my current hapiness that comes with the "summer job" then so be it. What makes you happy, is obviously far different from what currently has the potential to make me happy.