KTHANXBYE: A Year of Hellos to Howler Monkeys, Hookers, and Hope

By Emma P. Baker

Not all midlife crises are the same. Occasionally, the textbook symptoms - questioning the meaning of life, running off to the jungle, becoming a faux dominatrix - materialize about twenty years too early.Such distress seemed a bit premature for an eighteen-year-old. Emma Baker realized then that she had read far too many stories about people who have reached the middle of their lives, only to realize they missed the strains of Robert Frost running down the path after them, shouting "Wrong fork!" She did not want to wait until she was in the middle of a marriage or completing her doctoral degree in Wilderness Therapy (it exists!) before realizing she had no idea how she had gotten there. Inspired by her failure to swim the English Channel, she took a year off before starting college. The idea was to travel and figure out what direction her life was going to take. In reality, she ended up almost falling into a caiman-infested canal, bringing a children's book to life, becoming dominatrix (sort of), and learning about the human condition. That is to say, entering food service.KTHANXBYE is the story of one girl's quest for a life well-lived and a ringing endorsement of the possibilities inherent in the bona-fide, never-thought-I'd-find-myself-here unexpected. Too often, each of us feels pressured to do what society expects of us, and we deserve to actually figure out what will truly make us happy...or at least the wrong way to turn someone on. If the life we are living so far has not encouraged such exploration, perhaps we need to turn away from it with a flippant, "Kthanxbye!...For now."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1478341912
• ISBN13: 9781478341918
• Release Date: September 2012
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 6.0"