Allen Ginsberg, Tribute to the Wise

Lately, as I did this past summer in Portland, I've been combing through Allen Ginsberg's The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice. On May 14, 1943, Allen Ginsberg was accepted at Columbia College in New York City. Sixty-six years later, his erratic and accomplished Columbia career still resonates with, teaches, and impresses me. Nearly three-hundred pages of The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice, a work compiled of poems and journal entries from the earlier part of his life (1937-1952), is dedicated to his time spent at Columbia College. Who he met, what he did, classes he skipped, professors he adored and respected - the journal as a form of writing, in some ways, accurately captures what it meant to be a "Beat": Spontaneity, dreams, insanity, rhythm, flow, restlessness, desire.
I guess it was inevitable that this blog would venture out towards other subject matter; after all, you can't go out every night, and even if you did, it can't be that fun for others to read about the nights I spend drinking instead of working. I'm feeling a bit under the weather after my trip. That, combined with the time change, has left me wide awake at 330 in the morning. Just tonight I came across a journal entry of Allen Ginsberg's from January 4, 1952:
           "Subject for a novel--the history of mistakes and successes of a young literary (again) type, in securing his position in the world--young man without ambition or goal, only theoretical. Is success theoretical or accidental?"
As I sit at my desk and ponder this question, I wonder: what will my position be in the world? At this time next year, where will I be? what will I be doing? what, what, what? where, where, where? and with who? I do not wish to weigh myself down with existential or philosophical concerns about the future, no more than I wish to eat a pickle. I hate pickles. I realize that, being a (almost second semester) senior in college, it may be time to begin thinking not about what I'm going to do next year, but rather, first, what I want to do. It's scary to think that I still don't know. A 9-5 job seems unlikely, but who knows?
I sit here and wonder. I think, "Am I that young man with only theoretical ambition or goal?" Quite possibly. Quite possibly much of my generation is. We all have hopes and dreams, grandiose ideas and romantic notions about the future, but what will we do about it? How will we get from point A to point B? Is success really based on accidents, "the right place at the right time, the who ya know and who ya don't" kinda deal.
Is success theoretical or accidental?