AverageSecrets

It gets colder and darker, and I get colder and paler.  Doesn't seem so significant a change in September, but come November I am fully immersed in the pale, dark, 5 steaming coffees a day lifestyle.  I buy darker lip gloss.  I moisturize... more.  I crawl into people's beds who's beds I should not be crawling into.  (Who can resist high thread counts, working heat, and an extra body after a few glasses of pinot noir?)  One of the major shifts in my existence with the onset of a chilly, blustery, downright off-putting atmosphere is the increase in time I spend loitering in cafes, mostly wishing I was back in Budapest so I could chain smoke with my latte.  These hours are willed away through my usual time-eating activities of reading fashion magazines I can't afford to buy (I'll site the economic downfall here only to justify the fact that I once used to spend $50 bi-weekly on my collection), staring at the scruffy man-boy attempting to look intellectual and cynical by reading philosophy (they're not still in college, are they?), and most importantly, scouring my brain and the internet for employment and careers and inspiration.  Full time job, really.  But as I've said before, talking and thinking don't always make for doing, and sometimes (ok, most times) these hours yield nothing more than a deeper longing to DO what I want to do in life.  Even though the specifics of my desires are often altered daily depending on how strong my coffee is or how many drugs Olivier did while putting together the issue of Purple I was reading, I nevertheless always leave feeling motivated, yet utterly confused.

How does one help this cause?

I think I've come to understand we are all confused.  And this realization, though far from helpfully explanatory, is comforting.  I'm assuming it stems from my previous epiphany that we, the people on my street, in my coffee place, at the dog park, we the people!- are just average humans, living an existence they want. Or one they don't. Either way, there must be an element of confusion in there somewhere. Though probably the ones that live the life they don't want carry it heavier than the dream achievers.  

Does the confusion end?

I can answer this one with a confident NON.  Mes amis, confusion is a life long affliction affecting even the most deliberately successful people.  Examples:

My most accomplished friend to date, we'll call her Miss M (not the miss M, but divine in her own right), with a great corporate job she actually likes, a life-plan including owning an apartment and a 401K, and a stellar current address to boot, is still, shall we say, lost by way of the man super highway.  It might be a result of that unwritten cliche that says when all your ducks are in a row in one pond, the other boasts scattered, sporadic, unreliable ducks(or, for some, ahem, no ducks at all).  Whatever the reason, confusion from this nonsensical occurrence is bound to sprout in the minds of even the most focused Miss M's.  

Mr. Jones, my ex-something and future law student, deals daily with confusion of a different, yet equally concerning sort.  Dying to be a part of a world he was not brought up in, he indulges in his desire to be seen as the lackadaisical, spoiled, uninterested prep-school kid (the type I've been yearning to be free from for almost 24 years now) by buying blazers and dating Colombia girls with Upper East Side townhouses and personalities.  Scotch holds a place in this production as well.  But the kicker is that he actually succeeds, (I think most don't care enough to call him out, I, on the other hand, make it my full responsibility) and is apparently quite intelligent and will get into an Ivy league law school.  When fantasy becomes reality 90% of the time, how can one not be confused?

Alas, to my own confused life.  It basically amounts to one consistent mass of confusion.  Job-can I get one? Men-huh? Ambition-too many.  What to do then, but continue on.  Strive for it all, focus on one.  Try everything, do anything.  The measure of this is yet to be seen, but I can only give advice to myself based on what I know, and this not being much, I'm eager to learn.