Groovy, Baby

I'll give you three chances to guess what I'm about to write about. Oh, African Drumming? Wow, you got it on the first try. You've been paying attention, I see.

I'm always so in love with what my professor says in that class. I know he's talking about drums, but it sounds more like he's spurting fountains of wisdom and life analogies to me. The topic today: Find your groove. He was referring to finding the basic rhythm of what we were playing and then elaborating with our own improvisations. But what it sounds like to my ears is more along the lines of "find yourself." Find your own groove in life, because marching to the beat of someone else's drum is merely the equation for an epic fail.

I always look at myself now (and everyone else at UGA, for that matter), remember that time (once upon a time) I thought 20 was old and grown up, and laugh/ get stressed out. In my mind, 20-22 sounds like the age where everything comes together. You're supposed to know what you're going to do with the rest of your life, look stunning, feel stunning, and be filled with a very high and naive level of confidence and self-esteem. However, now that I'm here, I see that my silly little self was, in fact, very wrong. I have less of a clue what my life will be like in the next 3 years than I did when I was 10 years old. And let's be honest, that's pretty terrifying to think about. It makes me feel like there's some part of life I'm just failing at. Why don't I know these things by now? Why am I so confused about ... well, basically ... everything?

So I suppose it's comforting to hear someone tell me to just find my groove. Yes, step number one. I can handle that. And from there, life ain't so tough after all. Because once you find yourself (aka your groove), that will guide you and your decisions from that point on.

So, that's a burden lifted. I mean, I already had my superbly awkward phase in middle school. If we can survive that, I'd say we can survive anything. So my plan? Grab a drum (preferably a djembe), play, and march. I guess we'll see where that takes me when I get there.