My thesis project has been in a virtual standstill for months. I've tried every thing I can think of to make it work and every time I hit a wall. I feel like I'm getting nowhere, so I lose the motivation to run any more experiments. Instead I just sit here in front of the computer wasting time. I don't go home, because home is more stressful than work... too much confusion and disorder. Both places start to feel like a dungeon I can't escape... I spend most of my nights and all of my weekends tutoring. It's great money, but it's starting to feel like I don't have any calm in my life... any time for me.

My mind wanders back to the time when I had just arrived in Berlin and didn't know anyone except the family I was staying with. I borrowed my uncle's bike and set out to explore the city... headed down Kudamm to Zentrum and then to the Siegessaule. Suddenly it started to rain, so I took cover somewhere and sat alone eating an apple, feeling independent and so fucking alive. It's been so long since I have felt that way... so in control of my own destiny. I fantasize about running away from my life-- changing my name, moving to Europe and leaving everything and everyone behind. Just LIVING again.

I feel inexorably torn between two extremes in my life-- my ambition and my thirst for adventure. On the one hand, I feel the pressure of time catching up to me. I'm 25 years old now... I feel like it's time to settle down, buy a home, start a family. I feel like I don't have the time to waste dicking around-- that I should already have the down payment for a house saved up and should be focusing on advancing my career and putting money into my 401K. It's really never too early to start... So the plan is to move back to San Diego as soon as I graduate in 2009, get a job in big pharma, buy a house ASAP and get on with my life. Then there is the small matter of my mortgage broker's license.. what the hell am I going to do with it? I plan to open a small brokerage but I know nothing about the industry that can't be learned from textbooks, and frankly, thinking about business licenses and taxes just stresses me out more. But I know what I am capable of achieving in my life, and I won't settle for any less.

That's the "type A" in me... but a big part of me is screaming that I'm not ready to grow up and settle down... demanding that I not squander what's left of my youth. Should I just take a year and travel the world... ride bikes across Italy, take a pilgrimage across Spain, teach English in the Czech republic or lounge on a beach in Thailand? Should I find my way back to one of the places that has stolen my heart? There are so many places I would love to see and to experience but so little time to do it. I feel like my life is passing before my eyes.

If only we could stop time... turn the hourglass on its side and extend our youth indefinitely. Life would be so much less stressful if there were just more time...