I am so restless about life. . .

I just stopped by my good friend Katie's house this morning, and we sat down had cereal and tea while she was still in her pj's. But while I was talking to her, she told me that she had just made the decision to drop out of Bethel for a year and do something else. She doesn't know what that "something else" is yet, but she does know that she won't be staying at school this year. I was really happy for her, because she is at least being honest about what she wants. Because if she had chosen to stay at school for a year, she certainly wouldn't have been happy or satisfied. And even though taking a year off isn't necessarily the responsible thing to do, it's where she needs to be.
But now, I'm rather restless while thinking about the future and the riskiness of graduating and trying to find something to do with my life. It's not that I'm scared about what I will do, but yet I am. I don't have any kind of set goals in mind, or exact careers that I'm shooting for, I rather have many vague goals that I hope to accomplish eventually. For example, I know I will go to grad school someday, but when and for what is yet to be determined. I want to learn how to do wilderness camping and climbing, I want to climb a mountain, preferably Kilimanjaro, and I want to write a book, not sure what about yet. I want to run a marathon, hopefully in the next year. I want to learn Latin and Chinese. I want to learn how to play the guitar.
After I graduate, I won't have professors holding me accountable to learning, but yet I know I want to keep learning and reading and discovering new things and new ideas. But will I keep seeking out new opportunities to learn and grow, or will I just become lazy? I was saying to my good friend Emily last night that I am so deathly afraid of settling. By that I mean, settling for less in life, career, future, marriage, learning, in EVERYTHING. But she said to me: "Mel, you won't settle, because you already have decided that you won't." And I won't.
I guess I didn't think the uncertainty of the future would bother me this much, but now when it's looming so close (not that it's bad), it's just so much more real to me now. What am I going to do with my life?
I don't have to have it all figured out right away. . . .