The notice about a coming storage problem has me digging through the files to see what needs to stay and what can go.
Email exchanges from February 20, 2003 ask for a direct line because it doesn’t make sense to keep going through the switchboard make me smile at changes.
It is common now for that information to be in a signature and less common to be routed through a human switchboard.
There are emails containing old cover letters, resumes and assorted samples of writing in a variety of styles.
“Dr Crackme may have a duck pond in his backyard but he is the mind of quack you see for a crack.”
“When you think of me I think of you.”
“Barney’s Blarney bailed out the boat on the bottom of the beach.”
Sometimes you look at these fragments and remember exactly who you were and what you were doing and sometimes it is like visiting a stranger you used to know.
It is a surreal experience going through these materials, so easy to click and delete some things and harder to get rid of others.
You look at some words, phrases and expressions and see them like children you don’t want to orphan and think that holding onto them makes sense because you might find a use for them in something down the road.
Just a few pixels, don’t take up much space so maybe it doesn’t make a difference if you hold onto them for a bit longer.
But there are others that make you shake your head and you think you need to make space if not online but in your head because they have no place in your world now.
Who Am I
It is a question I know the answer to and yet ask over and over again.
My freshman daughter is in the midst of a schedule that is probably harder than anything I did in college.
While she talks about organic chemistry and a chemistry minor I think back and remember cruising through my freshman year with a bunch of general education classes.
I remember the English professor who suggested I could get into the honors program and think back with the perspective of someone who has been out of school for 30 years.
There is no good reason for me not to have done it. I could have handled it. Could have handled most anything that was thrown at me provided I was willing to put in the work.
Probably should have done more to challenge myself but I didn’t and here I am.
Can’t go back and redo it nor can I say whether life would be better or worse now. But if the guy I am now was talking to that college kid I would have sold him on it by telling him he wouldn’t have had to rush for classes.
Life is filled with these moments, always easy to second guess yourself.
There is vanity and there is sanity– pick the things that give you peace of mind and recognize that sometimes those things might be tied into vanity.
That is not always going to be a bad thing, depends on the situation and circumstance.
And I would remind them they too can handle whatever is thrown at them, just have to be willing to do the work. I’d also add that if you miss out on an opportunity that means something to you and it comes back up you ought to pay attention.
Not A Cover Anymore
Johnny’s cover of Hurt always gets me thinking and reminds me that it is just not a cover anymore, he owns that one.
It is twenty years since it came out and my appreciation for it has grown with time. That is what age and life experience bring you.
You see things from afar and some from close up.
My maternal grandfather died 18 months after my grandmother and I know it’s because he chose to let go. He had enough without grandma.
A friend posted on Facebook that her mother died last week. About four days later she posted her father had died, made me think about grandpa.
A video I came across began by saying it was going to wreck the day of those watching it.
“Fifty isn’t middle age. Most people don’t live nearly that long, it is really closer to somewhere in your thirties so if you are over fifty understand most of your life is over.”
That is me paraphrasing it, but I think I am pretty close.
I have a pretty damn good shot at making it to 100 or even past it, but there are other reasons to recognize that might not happen.
So that video didn’t wreck my day, I have been aware for a long time I might only have another 25 summers just as easily as I might have 50 more.
It is why I push myself to do some things that I might not want to do right now. Tomorrow isn’t a given, though if you try to take it from me I will fight for it.
Not ready to check out, got too much to do and see.
That one kiss can change your life and you want to experience it again and again.
That one brush against life’s lips sucks you in and you need to breathe the air and see what else comes.
So Johnny’s song and the accompanying video, yeah I understand and appreciate it differently than I once did.
The Goal
To taste life, that is the goal. It is part of why I do what I do and what drives me.
Don’t want to just pass through the days, I want to leave a path.
It doesn’t have to be known by the world or provide any fame. Just has to be known by me because if I do it right I will have that peace-of-mind I mentioned above.
Not ready to say I tasted life, still time to say tasting.
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