Holding Pattern

Sometimes I feel like we're in a holding pattern. I feel like we're simply waiting for the next thing to happen. We're perfectly happy, but it feels like we're nonetheless hovering in limbo as we have one foot still in school and the other in the world of careers, house buying, and family.

Maybe it's just my anxious, impatient nature, but I feel like we're ready to move on. We've been saying we're ready to move on for months now, but I think it's finally sunk in. As long as we're still in school it feels like we're still little kids who should already be in comfortable jobs and in more grown up living quarters. We haven't hit that dreaded 30 wall yet, but it seems like that age represents some sort of cut-off. Like you should be settled at that point.

Don't get me wrong. Being a grad student has its advantages. You more or less get to make your own schedule, you get to learn all the time, and we're getting degrees that will help us advance our careers down the line. On the other hand, school has lost a little of the glamor that it once seemed to hold, and I find myself constantly explaining to people that I'm not just a 26 year old who works in a bookstore. We're under no illusions that having a career is glamorous either, we're just ready to be done with one phase and move on to the other.

I guess that's really the whole point. We've been in school for a majority or our lives, and we're ready to leave that world and plant our feet firmly on the other side, never mind the shade of the grass.