Radio Workshop

Life, Love, the Universe and Everything (Transcript)

by Gretchen Wilson

I'm 28 years old and I have no idea what to expect from the rest of my life.

I'm about to graduate from journalism school in New York City. Only ten months ago, I uprooted myself from my life in Seattle… where I could have been married, with a stable job and my own house. Now, everything is so… undecided. I have a thousand different aspirations, no money, and the finite time of one human life. It is simultaneously exciting and terrifying.

I feel like a kid again, like when I first truly felt time passing. When I was nine, I realized that I was already too old to become an Olympic gymnast. Of course, I wasn't taking gymnastics, but even if I started training right away, I would never be the best in the world. It was crushing, like the day before my sixth birthday, when it dawned on me that this would be the last time I would ever be five in my entire life. The last time I would ever be five in my entire life. These kinds of things make me very sad.

Later, when I was 10, I watched a movie shot in Morocco, where the landscape was all deserts and clear blue skies. It was far away from the tall evergreen trees around my home in rural Washington state. It was the world. The world was out there. After watching the movie, it was settled. When I grew up, I'd move to Morocco.

But I had a problem. On the one hand, I wanted to grow up and live a life of fame in countries all over the world. But, at the same time, I also wanted to be a mother of a huge family, with maybe eight or nine kids - one big community. I knew that I couldn't realistically live both lives.

When I was a teenager, I made a list of all the places I wanted to live before I died. These included: an artists loft in New York City, on a working horse ranch in Colorado, in a beach town in California, and in an apartment in central Paris.

And as I've gotten older, the list of lives to live just grew.

For the past few years, I've had this vision of living in Mexico City. I imagine myself as one of those correspondents who lived on the edge - exposing corporate and political corruption. I dream of having handsome lovers, wearing fine clothes, and hosting dinner parties of a new legion of Trotskys and Riveras and Khalos.

On the other hand, maybe I'll move to rural Alabama and work for the local radio station. I'll live in a little old house with a porch and host neighborhood bar-b-ques on warm nights.

Or maybe I'll save up some money and buy a ticket to fly to Zimbabwe to report on AIDS and politics and the IMF and the World Bank. I'll meet other reporters like myself and file dispatches from haphazard modem connections.

It is all so unknown.

A friend my age told me that he has come to the realization that there are things that he has given up on. For instance he says he has come to peace with the fact that he won't learn another language before he dies.

He seems okay with it. But stuff like this causes me so much anguish. After the whole gymnastics thing, I haven't had the heart to give anything up.

Even though I'm realistic and practical. I still want to meet every person in the world. I want to live a thousand lifetimes.

But, in the short life I have been given - here's what I know I'm going to do: I am going to be a reporter - a modern day muckraker who uncovers all sorts of corruption and vice. I'll speak truth to power and I'll meet many more role models and lovers and friends. And maybe someday I will end up having a huge family, on a horse ranch in the mountains of Colorado. But not before I move to Mexico City.