I wonder how often it is that a reality check occurs to people while they’re sitting on the couch? For me it happened just the other day.

While watching TV, my room-mate came in looking rather flustered. He proceeded to tell me how our landlord had been calling him over and over for the past week or so asking if he had found new tenants to replace us for next year.

Listening to his story I realized, “oh yeah, I’m not going to be here next year. I’m graduating in three months.” And that was that.

This year has sped by for me, a blessing considering the horror stories we so often here about college seniors failing their culminating exams or not graduating by one credit.

I haven’t had much trouble in way of classes and all around I’ve been enjoying the sense that I will soon never have to sit behind a desk ever again if I so choose.

But a strange reality that I have had to deal with is the fact that where I am now is quite different from where I had intended to be.

I’ve always seen myself as wandering freely by this point in my life. After graduating I always thought that jumping a train west or hiking Glacier National Park in Alaska with nothing but my backpack was a perfect plan.

As for work, I always sought to have the job that would take me across the globe and keep me as far from a sedentary lifestyle as possible.

A photographer seems natural. Photojournalists travel all over the place and never settle down, right?

But now I’m finding myself in a strange world that is very topsy-turvy from where I had originally thought of myself as being.

I’m not necessarily going into work where I’m spending all day in an office cubicle, but I am finding that my priorities are a bit more … responsible.

Instead of leaving my family, I’ve come to embrace them a bit more and be thankful for their support in my making it this far. I have a significant other now as well, and being with her I have seen that perhaps having a place to be “at home” might not be so bad either.  As always my friends have been there for me too.

I’ve already begun to look into jobs near my home in Massachusetts and though they may not be what I had wanted in the beginning, they are ones that will help my family pay back my loans and help to build a better home for my future hopefully.

In the past year I’ve come to greatly understand just how bad a shape the world around me is in and how unless great changes come about it’s not getting any better anytime soon. 

I may never get the opportunity to go the places I had once hoped to, though I haven’t given up my dreams to one day reach them. But for the time being I’m beginning to see how a life supporting those I care for might not be so bad either.