Tomorrow, September 18th, is the anniversary of my birth. That's right, it's my birthday. I'll be 31 years old. It's strange; I'm not filled with the bittersweet feeling that has accompanied my birthdays the past few years. This year I'm just..introspective.

 Since my 28th birthday, I've experienced a kind of panic whenever September came around; it was at that time that I realized how much of my youth I'd been wasting. It embarrasses me to write this, but I'd been in college off and on for around a decade, and had nothing to show for it. Well, I guess I shouldn't use past tense, because I still have nothing to show for it. Okay, that's not completely true; my 10 years of higher education did gift me with around $50,000 in debt, and a mountain of interest that continues to add to it.

The point is, I started experiencing what I can only describe as a panic depression, a weird fusion of the frantic desire to do something NOW and a crushing sense of defeatism; desperately trying to cram some life and good experiences won't make up for the fact that I had less time on this Earth than I did a year ago, or ten years ago when I was a fresh-faced high school graduate who had the entire world before him and the indomitable will to accomplish anything.

How the hell did I become so world weary without actually doing anything?

We fast forward to the present day. I'm sitting here, contemplatively absorbing the fact that today is last day of my 30th year; on Wednesday, September 18th at 2:23pm, I will have officially aged another year. And I have nothing to show for it. Just more of the same.

You can relax, I'm not about to slip into some "woe is me, woe is me" pity party. I think I've already mentioned that I'm done with those.

For once, I'm not sinking down into the murky depths of the past. Rather, I'm pondering the future, and what I want to do with myself. You see, I have this aversion to what most people call the Real World.

Best. Show. Ever.

The Real World involves waking up and dragging yourself to a job that you probably don't care about to do menial tasks that, in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter. You spend 8 hours of your day doing this distasteful whatever and then, exhausted, you shuffle zombie style back to your dwelling, where you spend the next few hours "relaxing" before you go to bed to get not enough rest so you can do it again the next day. You dance to this tune day in and day out, your only hope that distant beacon of light called the Weekend. You spend all of your energy striving for that glorious reprieve from the tedium, and once that shiny ray of light is finally in your grasp, it vanishes in the blink of an eye. And you're right back where you started.

You spend 5 days of the week striving for the last two, and in the meantime life passes you by.

And you'll probably follow this pattern for the rest of your adult life until you either retire, hit the lottery, or die.

This is my perception of it anyway. Perhaps I've made it seem bleaker than it is. After all, that doesn't account for people who genuinely, truly love their job or feel passionate about it. Those lucky few are truly blessed. The majority of us are not so fortunate.

For as long as I can remember, I've been deathly afraid of the Real World. I don't want to spend the rest of my life struggling at some job that I hate. I don't want to wake up one morning to discover that I'm 80 years old and I'm nearly out of time, while I wasted all of my youth and energy amassing money for trinkets and toys. I've seen how that movie ends; my own mother works 11 hour days, five days a week, and has nothing to show for it.

I can see myself all too easily falling into the same trap.

This represents the Real World, and your foot represents your hopes, dreams, youth, and energy.

It is far too easy to grow complacent. Complacency is one of the more deadly traps the Real World throws at you. You fall into a set routine and before you know it, tomorrow is your birthday. You blink in wide-eyed astonishment as that fact hits home: you are one year older, and that much closer to the end of the race.

The only escape from the Real Worlds' trap, the one thing that will bridge the gap between mere survival and truly living is finding something that you love, something that you're passionate about, something that really interests you, and doing it. Don't let little niggling fears and doubts and haters get in your way; most people are miserable and will do everything in their power to bring you down to their level. The worst thing you can do is let them.

This shiny ray of brilliant optimism has been brought to you by your Friendly Neighborhood Black Man. Don't forget to tip your waitress.