This is a question that's been bearing on my mind for the last couple of months.

I've lurked on here for years, learned the Harmonica, became an Eagle Scout and started college in the time I've spent contemplating this lifestyle. It has a lot of appeal to me- it speaks to my need for personal freedom and sense of wanderlust, but it also feels like I have no place in it. During high school I picked up a few hitchhikers and spent lots of time talking to homeless people- voluntary or otherwise- during marching band trips. I always wondered whether or not the life was right for me, and the response I've always gotten was "If you're leaving something better behind, you shouldn't go."

And I would be. I'm working towards a degree in English Education. I have nice friends, a girlfriend, and a bookshelf filled with books on Eastern philosophy and Jack Kerouac novels. The path has been laid out before me. Regardless it still feels shitty to know how the road ends. Reading the stories from u/PleaseCallMeTall and u/huckstah has shown me this incredibly dangerous and risky way of living that offers a pure expression of freedom that my college and career aspirations will likely never give me.

This cycle has repeated a few times- twice a year or so I'll pull up this subreddit and begin reading the same stories again, and I'll tell myself that the life I'm working towards isn't the one that I want at all. The people around me that I worry about are only tethers to a reality I don't want to live in. But then I remember that I don't want to disappoint my family. I think of the things my stepmother might say and how my dad would feel if I had disappeared after everything he did for me. I think of how my friends have reacted when I've told them that I want to leave, and I remember the people that have cried and begged me to stay without me trying to leave in the first place. Their grief makes my life feel worthwhile.

But now I feel that I've made all the spiritual progress I can living like this. I don't want to stay out of some optimism for how things will go, I want to stay for the sake of my attachments. I feel jaded, disillusioned and detached, and what's stopping me from leaving are the things that my spiritual desires want me to be free of.

As I drove home today I had to stop myself from slamming into another car on the freeway, not because I wanted myself or others to die, but because whatever would happen next would be completely different from how I knew tonight would go. Knowing my future has left with me an intense desire to change it, but I don't know if the change is worth it. Any advice or sympathy would be appreciated.

As a thank you for reading this long and possibly pointless post, here are the quotes I've written on the copy of my class schedule that keep me sane:

"The ultimate destination of every traveler is always himself." -John Keats

"Asceticism is not that you should not own anything, but that nothing should own you." -Ali ibn Abi Talib

"What'd I care about the tower of ghouls, and sperm and bones and dust, I felt free and therefore I was free." -Jack Kerouac