As of late, I've had a general frustration with the way some aspects of my life have been turning out. Holding a firm belief that we create our own realities, I led myself to questioning why I have felt so unsuccessful. After days of mixed thoughts about optimism and pessimism, lack of motivation and the like, I've had some renewed thoughts on optimism as a whole. I've been called a pessimist before, and while I have certainly had times when my thoughts have been incredibly negative, I feel that people's ideas of pessimism versus realism are incredibly skewed. In reality, I see optimism as an empty hope that things will improve. This is the reason realists and pessimists find optimism to be such a ridiculous idea. Optimism shouldn't just be about hoping for a change. People who spend all of their lives hoping will get nowhere. Sure, there are those few cases of luck, where you can achieve all you've ever wanted in life without having to create it for yourself, but the reality of life is that it takes effort to create ideals. I guess what I'm trying to do is turn optimism into a more positive version of realism, but that is all optimism should be. After brainstorming these ideas for a while, I realized why I'd been feeling so frustrated. At this point in my life, my first year in college, I am essentially standing in line waiting to board the roller coaster that is the rest of my life. I am standing here, growing closer and closer to the start of the ride, and gazing longingly back at my life before responsibility. I'm becoming old enough now that I have all of these high aspirations to travel and get out in the world and experience all that I can before I settle down and start my family... but now that I think, after the next four years of college, I dive head first into the working world without a moment to look back... and, buried in student loans, I will begin working my way past college and out of my childhood. If it takes me ten years to pay off my student loans, I will most likely already have a husband and a child. (Or, so I hope) All of a sudden, the next 14 years of my life are laid out for me like a map that only goes down one road in one direction. I suppose at this point, this is the time where I need to put my optimistic realism into play and try my damn hardest to break free before I get sucked into the working world without a chance to catch a glimpse at what life could've been like.