My perpetual mid-life crisis

This past weekend, I plunged into a near-frozen Lake Ontario with the elderly, the beer-bellied, and the elderly beer-bellied to join the prestigious ranks of the Polar Bear Club. Despite the fact that my finer parts have yet to un-shrink from the frosty sting of the arctic waters, I have no regrets because I felt more alive that moment than ever in my life.

It seems like I base my whole life around these impulsive and impractical undertakings. For no clear reason, I've driven to California, Alaska, and Maine; I walked on hot coals, and most daringly, I declared an English major.

Come May, I will graduate. I will have no job, no health insurance, and I think I'm beginning to overstay my welcome with the parents. I will have $30,000 in loans. Every time I shut my car door a pound of rust crumbles off and I shed a tear. I will be a feather in the wind in the midst of a tempestuous Katrina-like whirlwind.

My financial situation threatens to huff, puff and blow my ideal little world down. But as dreadful as all this sounds, I don't give a damn.

I've come to realize that I am perpetually in a mid-life crisis. Just as dads may crave a Corvette and a girl on the side, I can't wait for my upcoming roadie to the southern tip of South America.

My friends and relatives claim that my impetuosity is the product of my insanity. This may be partly true. My trips have cost me thousands of hard-earned dollars, and my English major, let's face it, serves no practical function at all. But I think it's even crazier to live a languid, lifeless existence in the short time I have in this limitless world.

I could have gone the "safe" route by becoming an accounting major but I would have also spent the past four years of my life in misery. Same thing goes with how we spend our time out of school.

On your next vacation, why not do something adventurous or something that will test your character? The cruise ship that attracts so many people makes no sense to me. People who go on cruises are herded like cows into a corral where their every need is catered to. Customers gluttonously pack the food in at the all-day buffet and have their asses competently wiped by a well-tanned 18-year-old cabana boy.

I wasn't always this way. There was a time when I pushed carts at The Home Depot. One day in the parking lot, I saw a bumper sticker that read, "Remember who you wanted to be." And there I was, a corporate whore with an orange apron and back pains pushing carts for the man. I knew from that day forward that I didn't want to live the life that I was living.

Instead of dreaming about a road trip to Alaska, I went on one. Instead of dreaming about walking on hot coals, I did so, endured great pain, infected the sole of my foot, couldn't walk for a week, and got a great story out of it.

My mother ceaselessly reminds me that this way of life will have to end. Maybe when I'm 40, pumping your gas under a different identity to throw off the loan sharks, then maybe it would have made sense to comply with her pleas to become an accounting major.

But for now, today, I'm happy where I am and that's all that should matter. Tomorrow you could drop dead, so why spend these years worrying about your well-being in the future, when you can worry about your happiness now?

I find that the words of Theodore Roosevelt are more helpful than any advice offered from friends, family, or teachers. He said, "Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

It is this gray twilight that I fear more than loans or a jobless future. To me, predestination is sacrilegious. Comfort and conformity: blasphemous, but glorious is the chance to do something mighty and unforgettable.