Plateau - I am in between right now. I am in between everything and therefore have no concept of what is normal in this limbo time that I exist in. My life is exciting and fast pace, most of the time. I love what I am doing and where I am going in life, most of the time. I am usually content in most circumstances and do whatever I can to make the place that I have found myself better. I normally don’t find myself wishing for the past but longing for the future, normally. But right now in life is not normal or anything that anyone has ever attempted explain to me. This time that I find myself in right now is neither as a college student nor as an adult. This time is on the edge of both, but neither. I am the living in the blank page in between chapters, the pause button on a DVD, the commercial break before the feature Sunday night movie continues. I have reached a plateau in the hike of life and then next step is not marked and the trail is not well traveled. The time I had in college was an amazing time. It was filled with growth and preparation for what comes next. The path that led me to the end was never very difficult to keep up with. There were the ups and downs, the bumps and detours just like any other trail I might walk on, but they weren’t anything that overwhelmed me or made me want to give up. And now that I have reached the end of that trail and walked out of those woods I have found myself in a place that I wasn’t told about, the in between. I think that I had the idea in my head that upon receiving a diploma I also received a wife, 2.5 kids, a suburban, a house on a cul-de-sac, and a six-figure paycheck. I assumed that I would be moving into a suburb neighborhood and involved with my kids soccer team. I would have an abundance of ‘adult friends’ that I would play golf with and talk about really important things that adults talk about. I think myself and most of the people my age assumed that those things were the automatics of life after college. But now I am after college and those things aren’t here. I am standing in a clearing with the trail of college behind me and no marked trail in front of me. In fact from where I am standing I can see a hundred different mountain tops off in the distance. I know that any of those mountain tops might be where the next trail that I embark on might lead, but maybe not. I can see directly in front of me about five feet before I am going to have to dodge a fallen tree or a large boulder. Just to even begin this next stage of the journey is going to take a lot of effort and learning. I feel like I am not prepared for the next step, that I can’t see far enough in the future to begin walking and moving towards it. I want to know what the next objective is, what will be the sign that I am getting close to finishing it, and what will be my prize when I arrive. But there is none of that here on this plateau. There is something even better. There is something that should thrill me very being. There is the permission to be wild. I don’t have to do what other people around have decided to do, I can do whatever I want and go wherever I want to do it. I can chart my own course to whichever peak I want to go to. I can head off in one direction and then change my mind. I don’t have to know today what I am going to be doing a year from today or where the path will lead me then. I can figure that out when I get there. The freedom that comes with completing one trek is that you will be expected to move onto an even more challenging one. With each step I take into this new wilderness I become sharper and surer of who I am. With my Faithful Guide and my perfect Trail book I have nothing to fear. The joy in the journey is that it is a journey in the wild blue yonder and nothing is going to hold me back from living life to the fullest. This is the Great Adventure.