i always feel old, i always feel young

I realize that part of the reason I've felt weird lately is because in many ways, I feel like this cycle of my life is coming to an end. 4 years of high school, 4 years of college, 4 years of real life, which i guess would make this my senior spring of grown-up life. But there's no graduation, no obvious next step, so I'm kind of at a loss. I wish someone would just tell me what my next steps were supposed to be.

Watching the Pudding with Rach was weird. The progression of my relationship with theater/comedy/etc. in high school/college/real life is basically feel insecure/admiring/bitter for 3 years, finally figure out a way to be part of the stuff in the last year, finally get the guy, and then after some awesome production, end up moving on, attempting to go back and visit, and realizing that stuff moves on, things stay the same, and you're not part of it anymore. In real life though, the hierarchies are more vague. There's no set time at which the old guard is forced to graduate and move on to the next stage of their life. People move to LA or get their big break, but the timing's much more unpredictable and you could spend 20 years hoping things change and finding you've stayed in exactly the same place.

In college, they groom you to care about traditions, to pass the torch on and be proud of the next wave. It's kind of a miracle that things could stay so similar when there's someone new in charge of an organization every year-- that not only can CityStep, the Pudding, the Crimson, and the Lampoon continue to exist but can so consistently have the same mindset, mentality, language and culture with an entirely new group of people. The Pudding is extremely committed to tradition to the point of formula. It's bizarre to watch a group of 19-year-olds that you've never met step into the shoes of their predecessors so flawlessly-- when you watch the show, you can see which character Peter Dodd and John Blickstead would have played and I'm sure someone 10 years ago felt the same way about some alumnus before my time.

On a different note, on the first warm day of 2012, I bought a pair of plastic pink sunglasses and a Ten Ren bubble tea, took out a book and walked. I felt like I was 13, 16, 19, and 22 again. So I guess it's nice that some things still make me happy a decade later.