I’m going through a bit of a self-created personal crisis, or maybe a personal renaissance. As I’m looking towards wrapping up my master’s in psychology I’m dealing with a little bit of “what’s next?” Also spending over two years waist deep in psychology, particularly with my focus on child development, is bound to effect change. I’m in a new season of life for me, and I have all sorts of questions about the meaning of life, of love, of relationships, happiness, healing, grief. I think I’m coming to terms that I will never figure out much of it, and maybe I’m not even going to reach “good enough” status. I think the beauty is still in the trying. The questioning. The consideration.
I’m in the unique position to have some sort of archive of my “early years” through the history of this site. IYKYK. I’ve been triggered to revisit some of that. Virtually revisiting your 20-something self is not for the faint of heart. With my current perspective I can see more of the patterns, the wrong turns, those moments where you want to yell at the TV, “don’t do it!” But there are still those glimpses of the little moments that make up a whole life. The trips with friends, the romances, the casual description of falling asleep on a friend’s shoulder. The little moments that seemed like nothing at the time but are really everything in reflection.
From this vantage, and my enduring tendency for nostalgia and fanciful thinking, it’s still hard to take fault with the girl trying to figure it all out back then. Do I have regrets? Yes. But I also think regrets don’t have to cause us to get stuck today. I can not alter the past. I can only choose differently. On the whole I don’t regret the website – never have. My regrets are mostly in the collateral damage of the people, the relationships. But isn’t a life really just a person bumbling around coming in to contact with other people? It’s going to leave marks and impressions as we collide and are sent spinning away only to collide in to another. Maybe our paths will collide again, and we will leave new impressions, maybe we won’t. I think only in hindsight can you fully understand the magnitude of the impressions we leave on each other or ourselves. And at 25, there’s little hindsight to be had.
I’m not sure what this is going to become or if it’s anything at all. There’s obviously a lot more story to tell, but for anyone that might have a moment of nostalgia and come here looking… these are just the facts of the life that has been lived:
I’m now on the cusp of 49. I’m embarrassingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, twice divorced. I have a child that was born when I was 44. I retired from corporate work in high tech at 46. While working, I finished a B.S. in Environmental Sciences in 2019. As mentioned, I’m in the last leg of a M.S. in psychology with a focus on child development. Many of the friends from the “old days” are still friends and family today.
Despite the life lived I’m generally happy, but there is always room for improvement.
While I’m not actively dating, I’m open to love again. I will always be a hopeless romantic. <Insert half serious joke about accepting applications or referrals>
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