"Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
Actually, though, I didn't choose that road. Not yet, anyway. Frost may have jumped on the "I'm gonna be the most famous American poet in recent memory" boat, but I'm still undecided. Both roads lie ahead and I'm here, sitting at the crossroads, eating an apple (beef jerky perhaps?) and seriously trying to decide which one to take. Of course you'll say it's just gainful employment for a summer, how bad could it be? I mean, it's not like its the rest of my life.
But what if it is? A small, but supremely-wise hobbit was fond of saying that the road goes ever on and on. So it may be a little path now, but that same small road may soon join something grander and larger and longer until I find myself, years from now, somewhere down the line wondering what the !@^#& happened to take me there.
New York ... California ... Seattle ... Salt Lake City ... China ... I might as well throw darts at a spinning globe. Maybe then at least I'd have some explanation for my choice.
"So Matt, how'd you end up in Kyrgyzstan?"
"Well, it was a mix of hard deliberation, serious thought, a twelve-pack of Mr. Pibb and an oddly-thrown dart."
I've never liked that freakish Cheshire cat - metaphorically or literally (or even literarily). He always sits above, pawing around in a tree waiting to tease and tickle the imagination with those blasted words.
"Which one should I take," I ask.
"Well, that depends on where you want to go," he replies.
"But I don't know where I want to go," I say.
"Then it probably doesn't matter, does it," he finishes.
At the end of this whole process, I may not know why I picked the place I'm going to work, but I will know at least one thing - I sure do hate that cat.
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