8. I don’t know what I want to do with my life. It worries me. Not because I think I will never do anything beyond what I’m doing now. I’m sure I will. It’s just a bad flaw in me. I wanted to be a writer, and I love writing screenplays, but it’s such a tricky thing to pursue and make a career out of. I’m to old to go back to school and I wouldn’t know what to do with a degree anyway. I AM aware that a degree is better than no degree. I don’t know if I want to live in Kansas anymore. For better or worse, Kansas has been my home for the better part of my life, but things are changing and I don’t know if I belong here anymore. I will do something great, but now I know that I don’t know what that is.
7. I really am kind of a nerd. I realize that’s a “duh” statement, but I think this is the first time I’ve really embraced it. When I was a kid, I was into Star Wars and Star Trek, but I also played and watched football and baseball and commanded the jungle gym. In junior high, I was still into that stuff, but I was also an angry kid and not a very good student. In high school, it was easy to consider myself a drama geek, which is a completely different classification of dork. After that, in my twenties, I began to collect other interests. I still loved sci-fi and fantasy and roleplaying games, but I was also into high falutin’ independent movies and dramas. In the last 10 years, I’ve faded away from all the things I loved in my youth and just sort of assumed they were buried. But they aren’t. I just haven’t acknowledged them. Lately, I’ve been putting them front and center where they belong. I can admit now that few things give me more pleasure than watching people shoot lasers at each other.
6. I’m never going to have the life back that I had when I was younger and I need to accept that. I burnt those bridges and lost many of the people who made it special. My task now is to make my life better than it was. If then was me having a lot of potential for greatness, now is fulfilling that potential. Becoming the person I’m supposed to be. That seems better.
5. I really love my friends and family. I know that’s a weird thing to suddenly learn. I’ve always had a problem with underestimating the value of people. It’s something I’ve taken notice of. I am who I am because they are who they are.
4. The human body is a strange thing and, contrary to popular science “facts”, it might be trying to murder us.
3. If you can’t find, even in the smallest way, forgiveness for the people who hurt you or compassion for them when they are down, then you can’t be better than them. I’m sure it’s been said by smarter people than me, but that kind of anger is a stone. If you hold onto it, it will sink you.
2. Conservative people really, truly scare me. They do. I have conservative friends and they happen to be great people, they really are. But the America they want seems to be a terrible place.
1. Everything can change. Everything. Financial situations can improve. Ruts can be exited. The impossible can become possible. It doesn’t just happen though. You really have to make it happen. Buttons must be pushed. Levers must be pulled. Every barrier we face has a secret door in it somewhere if we step back and try to find it. You can outsmart the darkness. Everything can change.
