Blasts from the past and assorted musings

[kellinator]

It isn't every day that your past walks up to you and says hello.

Or rather, that you say hello to your past, as I did when I realized the girl waiting for the elevator was someone I used to go to grad school with.

I don't think she recognized me at first. Then she squealed "You look great!!" I fired back the first thing which came to mind, which was "Of course I do. I'm not suicidal anymore!"

We caught up, and she kept telling me how terrific and happy I looked.

And really, it's true. Lately I seem to be getting into several conversations about the whole grad school thing, where I am now, blah blah blah.

The day I got kicked out of grad school, I cried for eight hours. Not because I was going to miss grad school -- hell, I had been seriously contemplating dropping out. No, it was because I had failed at the thing I thought I had wanted the most, the thing I had worked for all my life.

And now it turns out that it's the best thing that ever happened to me.

Dylan, as usual, was right: "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose." I had to start over. Figure out who I was, besides a brain. Expend less energy trying to impress others and more trying to impress myself. Spend less time planning -- Ph.D. by 26, first book published by 27 -- and more time living.

chuck_lynn just told me that I'm one of the people who really lives life, so I guess I got that part of it right.

Yes, I still bitch and gripe -- it's not in my personality to be Little Mary Sunshine. But every once in a while, I stop for a minute and think about it -- what I was, what I am now -- and I just grin like a loon.

And I think, it doesn't matter that my dreams didn't come true, because I'm living a life beyond my wildest dreams.