Life's a (Bowling) Ball

There’s something liberating about not having a schedule to follow. There is also something equally constricting about it. All of my life I have lived on a schedule. When you’re really young, your schedule is created by your parents. Everything is done on their time. Once you get in school, that begins to change. Suddenly you have your whole day planned for you. Most of my teachers would have our entire school day scheduled out on the board for us. I knew what we were doing and at exactly what time we were doing it. It became comforting to me to know how my day was going to go. In a sense, I knew the future. I knew what was going to happen in two hours and that gave me comfort. It gave me a sense of control. In jr high some of the scheduling isn’t quite as extreme. Your exact happenings per minute aren’t written on a board but you know what is happening week by week. I found the same to be true for high school and college. You always have some concept of structure when you’re in school. Even if it’s just knowing a due date.

But then the day comes when all of that structure goes away. The bumpers are removed from the gutters and it becomes up to you to meet the challenge: stay in the lane and ultimately knock the pins down. If you veer too far one way, you’re in the gutter, no chance of hitting any pins. But life is suppose to have moments when you're in the gutter. You’re suppose to have to learn to come back from hard times because as cliche as it is, in the end it's about whether or not you choose to get back up and keep going. As a recent college graduate, I find myself wondering how much distance I have between me and the gutters. On one side, it’s the freedom to do anything and everything. No one is telling me where to be when or giving my homework with a due date. I can do what I want with my days. On the other side though is nothing. No one is depending on me to be somewhere, no one is checking in on my attendance. I could spend an entire day binge watching Grey’s Anatomy and no one would yell at me for not turning in the homework. Standing in the middle of the two sides is me. And I’m terrified.

All of my life I have had structure in my days, I’ve had a routine. It gave me a sense of control and now my safety net has been taken away. I can’t see the future anymore and that scares me like nothing else. But then I look at the end of the lane and I see all those pins lined up, just waiting. And each pin means something. Career, love, family, financial stability, a home. Everyone’s pins stand for something different. I’m not even sure I know what all my pins represent, but I do know that without me, they’ll just stand there. They’re never going to come to me. And I know it’s not going to be a straight line to all my aspirations. I’m going to veer. I’m going to have days where the only person I connect with is Meredith Grey and that’s okay. That’s okay because the days that I do something of value are going to outweigh those other days. Once you really start your life, once the ball starts rolling it won’t stop until it hits something. I’m certainly hoping it’ll be the pins, but if it’s the gutter you best believe I will claw and fight my way back up.

I didn’t pick the easiest occupation to go into. My dreams of being an actor are up there with thousands of other people in Los Angeles and I am very aware of that. But I am also aware of the fact that when I close my eyes and I see what's at the end of the lane, the first thing I see is my success in this industry. I am too determined in myself to let some gutter stop me from getting there. And I am certain that there will be a time when I find myself convinced that I have hit the point of no return and that the only option is to give up, but I hope that in that moment I can remember to stop and breathe. And also take a step back. The great thing about bowling is that if at first you don’t hit all your pins, the ball comes back. Hope isn’t lost. You still get another throw.