eighteen... balding

Supposing there is an afterlife, I bet death looks like a fantastic happening in retrospect.

Should we all ask ourselves: Was childhood really that good? I am sure is a answer to the question, but is there a point in knowing, and more so, do we actually want to know it.

Nothing ever ends well. Everything has to end poorly in some regard or at least it wouldn’t end. Even if it just ends because it ends (like college) it still ends in a way you can’t control.

The great drawback of memory is that it is limited. We have to actually somehow mark the moments in our mind or we don’t keep it. If nothing about a person strikes you as odd, charming, funny, or attractive, the odds are you won’t remember them. We are lucky to remember anything at all. From passwords to old lovers first words, it’s a mass of unorginization (see I have to make up a word).

Things end, but rarely do things every start, they just seem to happen. With the exception of jobs and school, relationships and time periods never seem to arrive with a bang; they just coalesce to a point where all of a sudden your life is different. You look around six months later and the people in your life have changed, the loves in your life are different, and you can’t really point out how or when it all came together. That is life as it is living. We are given endpoints, but rarely lessons.

I remember back in 9th grade, there was a library dedicated solely to the science classrooms. In the library, which was nothing more than a classroom with bookshelves and carpeting. The great feature of this room was the computer room had a wall that separated it from the other part of the library, and best of all, the wall had two doors which locked from within. This was the greatest place in all of the school to goof off. Not only could people disappear for hours on end without teachers getting in, there was a phone in the room that didn’t as of yet need a code to get an outside line. We abused this thing. This was my favorite place my freshman year, by senior year, the wall was down and the no one came to the room anymore.

Anyway, this was in the days of the infancy of the net. Every student had their own file in which they could store files. I lead the entire school in MB usage, with over 150 MB dedicated to 15-second QuickTime clips from Star Wars and Beavis and Butthead, and the trailer to Braveheart. All of those were cherished items. My two favorite clips were a wav of Herbie Hancock playing Watermelon Man in which he narrates over the music in the middle and the first mp3 I ever had, Todd Rundgren’s Bang on the drum all day.

I have always been a collector by nature. I have probably 150 DVD’s. I finally got money during the period when the technology was becoming the new standard. This was during my college years, and I would visit DVD.ign.com more often than any other site on the net. Fueled by my film school growth, I was trying to get everything I could to make a collection that was esoteric and historic about the art form. I wanted to be known as the guy with the best and smartest collection.

I have the same thing with CD’s. Of any given top 100 albums list, I likely have close to half. I used to buy CD’s all the time. In my senior year, I probably made 8500 dollars. Which when you don’t have to pay for a car, is basically a line of credit no 18 year old should have. My CD collection went from 30 to 200. I probably spent 1000 on cigars alone, and was likely one of 10 kids in the country to bring a humidor to college.

I spent almost anything I could on media and toys. When I graduated college, I ran out of money and I stopped buying stuff. I was too poor. And when I had money, I spent it on other stuff. Like clothes and good meals.

The lone exception were TV shows. Aside from the occasional movie I bought, the only things I would rush to the store for were boxed sets of TV. I knew this marked the end of something, as I was no longer interested in learning or expanding my collection. I stopped going to movies all the time, I had reached a level I was content with. My tank, and my shelves, was full.

Truth is I am disappointed in myself. My 19-year-old self would hate who I am today. I am in a different place than I would have imagined I would be. It’s like I changed as a person. But that 19 year old doesn’t know what it’s like to become disaffected with a dream, to have the passion taken away not from a loss of personal desire, but because of outside forces that turn you away. I really miss the old passion I have, not because I lost it, but because it’s not the driving force.

The thing is though, that I am happy now. It’s like being in love, if you really shut down your thoughts, and ask yourself if you love that person, you just know. Same with happiness. You can question everything, and if you still do not want to leave, then you have your answer. Or at least it is being content.

And I know in 5 years, I will look back on today as if it was a golden age.

I suppose, that is growing up. You don’t care as much about now as you did about the past.