There comes a time when one has to put aside the daydream and get down to the business of living. When is that time, exactly? They tell me I'm young and I have time to kill; they tell me to spend this time doing what I want to do, not what I have to do. But I have bills to pay like any other adult, and there's a lot to work for.

I have a younger brother who loves baseball. It's become pretty clear that he's never going to pay the bills playing baseball. He's pretty decent, good enough for college level, but he hasn't got a snowball's chance of going pro. When is it time for him to give up the idea and go get a job as a number-cruncher in some random business somewhere? Clearly, he doesn't think the time has come yet. He has the opportunity to go and work as a student coach for a college baseball team. It's unpaid, but he's willing to take a gamble on that, as though just having it listed on his resume will get him somewhere on that near-impossible career path. Who knows?

And then there's me. I am focus-less. Ambitionless. I am the one who can't bring myself to believe that the things I want to do will ever be possible for me. I'm running out of time. There are easy ways, only a few more interpreting classes and I could have a comfortable career in something I don't love but which comes easily to me. Only a few years of work and I could easily find myself in an academic career, slowly growing more bored. Or is there still time to find a goal, to find something I want and make it happen? Can I even make it happen?

Bah, when you graduate from high school you feel like there's so much pressure to decide things. I thought when I finished, found a degree, took responsibility for myself, that the decisions would be easier. Ha. Ha. Ha. I find myself without a job again, wondering whether to look for something that might lead me in a direction I want to go or to give up the daydreams and look for something in a direction I know I can go. I have long considered "you can do anything" to be feel-good nonsense, fit only for the Reading Rainbow theme song. Right now, I wish I was more idealistic, or driven, or something.