Hitch yourself up to the golden.

"Here, I'm alive. Everything all of the time."

Today, while my thoughts unraveled from the oft-muddled jumble that they are and were sifted into contemplation of what and who I want to be, this lyric from Radiohead's second-weirdest album kept repeating itself over and over in my head like a broken record. And it's true. Here I am, world. And what I want to be is everything. Everything all of the time.

You see, the way I view the world as a wide-eyed post-grad is a strange duality. I could chalk it up to having textbook anxiety that sometimes hovers over one's mind like one of those stupid little bee-like bugs you see in the summer that hover in one place for a really long time (for years I've tried to figure out what those bugs are. I still don't know). Or, I could label it "the mind of an artist" because that's so much cooler (I mean, it's not like anxiety has ever been in vogue). Yes, I choose the latter--the rose-colored, unpredictable, erratic, translucent mind of an artist. Through my eyes, the world is wide and magnificent and full of possibilities. It is an incredible, beautiful place. With that said, it can also be a daunting, overwhelming, panicky place. So much to do! So much unfamiliarity. So much fear of failure. So much wide-open space, metaphorically and physically. How do I even know where to begin without my head exploding into a hailstorm of mashed potatoes and raspberry jam?

Everything all of the time. I want to be a writer. Which is good, because that is my bankable skill. One needs to make a living somehow. But the problem is, I also want to be everything. A musician, an artist, a researcher. A fantastic cook. An expert pie-maker who can whip out the perfect crust that puts Grandma's to shame. The matriarch of an incredible, happy, functional family (though obviously not at the moment). An environmentalist. I want to research bugs and plants and count rings on trees. I want to research soil and watershed systems for some reason. I want to appease my strange fascination with mycology and dig up mushrooms in a forest. I want camp out in the woods and go fishing and eat wild raspberries. I want to learn how to kick up my heels and dance non-self-consciously even though I am completely uncoordinated. I want to climb walls of craggy rocks and get cuts that develop into scars of honor. I want to be a printmaker and make woodcut prints on giant slabs of beautiful, swirly oak or irritable, sliver-giving birch. To painstakingly roll strips of ink into the thirsty pores of the wood and turn it in the press with carefully laid paper and see the ghost of my engravings in colors and space and shapes. And carve away, reductive process upon process until it's clean and beautiful and perfectly aligned. I want to paint, even though the very thought of painting makes me want to tear the top of my head off because I don't understand it. I want the world. I want to be, to do and to say many things.

So where does one begin to tackle these hopes and aspirations and quell the anxiety and fear that creeps up and boils over and douses any kindled flame of aspiration? Add that to the fear of not "fitting in" with any of the tradespeople of whatever you are pursuing, and you've got a self-inflicted, cumbersome situation on your hands. Which is just silly. An unecessary worry I've too often concerned myself with. "Fitting in"--or the lack thereof--is just a mind-set. And who cares anyway? If you want to do something, do it. You fit in by proxy because you are simply a human being surrounded by peers who share that same passion met with insecurity that you do, and you're all working toward a common goal. To express. To conjure beauty and stir things up and make things happen. To get through difficult times and to bask in the joy of precious life. This, coupled with the mere notion that we are fortunate enough to have these opportunities to thrive, celebrate and embrace--well, my friends, that could very well be the remedy to the post-grad's quandry. That, and to just breathe once in a while. It all glows warm in time, but the time to start is right now.