It’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and of course I’m spending it at work. I spend my weeks working 8:30-4 and then most of my weekends driving home to work there. This is the first summer that I have really begun to wonder how much time I am wasting going from job to job. I make time to hang out with friends during the week, but I find that I rarely take the chance to be spontaneous. In my opinion, this is a huge problem. If I want to do something it has to be very well calculated. I have to know a month in advance and everything has to be ready. I have to have off work, I have to know who is going with me, and most importantly how I am going to pay for it. It becomes so stressful that I begin to question if I even want to do it!

I have a serious case of wanderlust with a wallet that is telling me no way. There are too many things to worry about. I am lucky enough to have a mom who pays for some of my bills, but anything else I am completely on my own. It makes it harder to justify spending five hundred dollars on a trip. I am one of those people that over thinks way too much. How will I pay off loans, how will I pay for a house, HOW WILL I AFFORD CHILDREN?! Honestly, I am just as far as I have ever been from owning a home or having children (loans are a real threat though).

In reality, the things that are more important than money are the memories that I’m missing out on. There are so many things that I haven’t done just because I volunteered to work instead of joining. I had the opportunity to go to Florida with a friend over spring break. I skipped out on it to work. I am making myself go on a spring break trip this year because it’s senior year and a last chance to do this stuff with my friends.

When I look back on my college experience I don’t want to see punched time cards and nights spent counting the hours away until I’m off the clock. I want to see the hours I spent soaking in everything. Not worrying about when the next time I am going to punch that time card, but rather not worrying about anything at all except having a drink by a beach that I may never see again in my life. With people that I never know how much time I may have with. It seems dismal, but this is a crazy world we live in.

It’s time for me to realize that I need to embrace this crazy world, and not plan everything out. Jobs are important to fund these wild and crazy adventures, but that can’t be the only thing that we focus on. It’s time that we stop working our lives away, and embrace the wanderlust.