T-minus 1 Month

(ALMOST)

In exactly 1 month from today, yours truly will be turning 25. 2-5, yikes!! That will officially make me closer to 30 than 20. Aaaacck!! For some reason 30 kinda scares me, lol. Okay, maybe more than kinda, the mere mention of turning 30 gets me upset now, although I doubt (hope) that it will have that much affect on me as the day actually approaches. But that's for another day, back to 25.

Yeah, 25, what? That's kinda old. I know many of you out there will say "Oh no, Mark...25? That's still your youth! I long to be 25 again!" Whatever! You wouldn't have wanted to hear that crap from someone older when you were 25 and I don't want to hear it know, so pfft! Of course, it doesn't help when my mom calls and says things like,

"You know, Mark, you're gonna be 25 soon. That's old! What are you going to do?"

Gee, thanks Mom! Always the encouraging word, haha.

To be honest, the sheer age of 25 itself doesn't scare me. In all honesty, I don't really think 25 is all that old. (I decided long ago that 26 is kind of my ideal age. Everything up to that point is just spent in preparation and everything after that point will just be building on the amazing foundations set up until then. I look forward to reaching that point...and stopping. Every birthday from then on will likely be a remake of the 26th, haha.) What concerns me more about becoming a 25 year old is the state I'm in currently. No, I don't mean physically...although I NEVER expected to be living in South Carolina at 25, that is a shock. But just in general...I don't feel like I'm where I should be at 25.

Looking back over the years, especially to my early college years, I looked to 25 as the point at which one should be fairly established and have a lot of stuff figured out. You should be more or less settled at this point. I mean, for my life, I knew that by this point I would have graduated college, have my "entry level" years of work behind me and really be beginning to enter the "adult" part of life, leaving the "young adult" part. Of course, as I said earlier, I think 26 is the epitome of all this, but at 25 you should have many ducks in a row to be well on your way to an amazing 26th year.

On the outside, I may look rather settled and grounded and matured or whatever, especially for a 24 year old, and truthfully, in many ways, I am. I mean, I do own a home, am not really reliant on my parents, have my own thing going for me, etc., but there are so many other things that definitely need to be in place before I truly have become settled.

**Side note---knowing me, I doubt I'll ever become truly settled, nor do I want to. I've always been one of those people who is constantly looking forward to the next big thing or next life stage or whatever. To ever actually be settled at a point in my life really gives me little to push for and look forward to moving on to...kinda takes my drive away, and I'm a very driven person. By saying "settled" I really am implying "settled for this stage of my life."**

Anyway, I'm not going to get into the deepness of what makes me unsettled on the blog. If you really want to know that, you'll have to IM me or something. And honestly, I expect significant progress on one such front in the next few weeks, but there are some basics that are certainly lacking. For instance, my love life has been...well...have you read about it on the blog at all? Yeah, so that sums that up. My last date was a psuedo-blind date (she had seen me at work, but I really had no recollection of her) set up by my previous gay manager at Job #2, which I hated (the job, not the manager) with a woman 8 years older than I was. During the date she referred to me as the "male version of her." While I get that she was simply commenting on the many similar views we shared, probably not the sexiest way it could have been put. Anyway, beyond that, there are some major roadblocks that I feel need to be cleared before I even actively pursue a love life.

Again though, while I'm not particularly looking forward to this big day next month, I suppose it's not the end of the world. But it had better be a busy year! I do have a lot riding on 26! haha I suppose I will be spending the next 394 working hard to get ready!! Yeah!! (I do have a big celebration planned, which is always good. I'm not going to bother posting about it now, but I'm sure in a couple weeks I'll write an entry on it.)

Currently, the main thing getting me through this is the knowledge that my car insurance rates will be dropping significantly in 29 days! hehe!