For Now, We Inch.

When you're twenty-two and you're a senior in college, there are a series of questions that middle-aged people tend to ask you without any hesitancy.

Do you have a boyfriend? (That one gets me every time.)
What's your major? (Obviously political science so I can be the first female president. I mean, I'm an English Major.)
What are you going to do with that English Major? (I always want to laugh loudly at them and then flounce away into the sunset when people ask me this question.)

Middle-aged people, and even people that aren't middle-aged, even old people like my grandparents tend to ask these questions without the thought that maybe they make the average twenty-two year old person highly uncomfortable. Because, you know, you're supposed to have all this stuff figured out. You're supposed to know exactly what you want to do with your major, and you're supposed to have this great concept map taped to your wall with this great plan with arrows that points right to a big square that says DREAM JOB! with about eighty-three exclamation points around it.

I always envision this concept map to look like Westeros from Game of Thrones and I'm on the King's Road, trying to get to King's Landing on a month-long journey. The only problem with this metaphor is that my journey to my dream job is a lot longer than the trip from Winterfell to King's Landing, and I feel like if I ever get to King's Landing, I'd get beheaded, and that's kind of a downer.

Sometimes I think it might be easier to be beheaded than to pursue my dreams, though.

This is a good headline: "Beheaded College Student's Last Words Are: 'At Least This is Easier Than my Real Dreams'". (I probably shouldn't go into journalism.)

Whenever an adult makes me uncomfortable by asking me what on earth I want to do with my life, I always have my answer prepared, and that answer is simple.

I WANT TO MOVE TO ENGLAND! (Sorry I only used one exclamation point, eighty-three seemed really obsessive.)

People tend to have two reactions to my statement. The first is the over-the-top oh-wow-that's-so-cool-and-progressive-that-you're-moving-abroad-wow-you-have-such-guts-and-I'm-sure-it'll-be-magnificient.

Then there's the good old "but why would you want to leave America?"

When I explained this to my grandfather, he shook his head and called me a coward that's far too cowardly to fix the American government, and you know what, he's absolutely right, because my life is governed by something called Generalised Anxiety Disorder, and I suppose that's why I even have this in the first place, this blog about how I'm going to hop across the pond and start my fabulous life in London or York or somewhere with my English Degree and make a name for myself.

Like I said, it might be easier if I get beheaded.

When real adults ask me what I want to do with my life and I tell them truthfully that I want to blog professionally over in England, a lot of them are very excited and then very skeptical, mostly because most of them don't believe that blogging is a real profession. They're all very keen on asking me exactly how I'm going to achieve this DREAM JOB!!!!!!! of mine and if my mother will miss me.

Yes, my mother will miss me, but we're planning a time where she and my dad visit me for an entire month, I get them London subway passes, and we take a train to France.

The other side of that question has yet to be answered, and normally I just shrug my abnormally broad shoulders and if I had the long, curly hair that I've wanted all of my life, I could twist it shyly and look cute while doing it, pretending to pursue my dream.

I'll fly across the pond! Get a cheap flat! Meet a nice British man with a steady job who is okay with never having a dog and wears sweater vests! We'll grocery shop together and he'll kiss me every time I get a rejection letter! Eventually I'll burst into the British workforce and we'll get married in a big cathedral and have adorable British children and my mother will still miss me!

Right now I'm inching. I'm working through this terrible thing called Anxiety with a capital A, and some days it's going to prevent me from going to the career planning office and sitting down with someone and professing my dream of doing this great thing, this great thing that I'm afraid of.

For now, we inch.