Living life as I know it

The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.

-Albert Einstein

Sometimes things don't go quite as you had planned. Sometimes your plans seem trivial once you finally get to them. And sometimes, if you're like me, there are no real plans. I'm a go-with-the-flow kinda girl. I make lists that I never look at once the last word's written. I don't ask for directions. I don't like being told what to do. I certainly don't like it when people ask me "Why aren't you married yet?" or "Why would you ever think of leaving here again [the town where I grew up and where I find myself living once more]?" To say it nicely, I'm a bit of a strange breed in this town. I am single, 24, and in no rush to settle down.

I grew up in this town [BTown, I'll call it], when it was still considered a town. Now it's a city with suburbs and sprawl, pollution and congestion, and the conservative undertones that come from a rather vocal religious affiliation. Most of the people from my high school graduating class are already married, some on their second marriage, with kids and mortgages and soccer games. I'm here with two roommates, three cats [mine came with the house, the other two with my roommate], and more takeout boxes in the fridge than actual ingredients. I went away to college, lived abroad, fell in love, earned a degree, fell out of love, worked on a boat in Alaska, and then made my way back home to spend some time around my family. The idea/'plan'/hope was to move back abroad after a while to see more of the world before settling down. That was a year and a half ago. I'm beginning to see that hope fade. I'm stuck in a rut like many twentysomethings who can't seem to find their footing in the real world. It doesn't make it any easier that we have set out to find ourselves in a world when the economic situation could be better. I've read that we could become the 'lost generation'. Isn't that a pleasant thought? Feeling like this for the rest of our lives? Awesome.

So I'm here. Staring at the computer screen late at night after getting home from work and trying to figure out just what I'm going to do with myself. And just when life begins to fall into the same routines, something little- like a staredown with a good-looking stranger across the street or an impromptu road/plane/train trip just to get away- makes life seem a bit brighter or, at the very least, more entertaining. Anyone else feel the same way?