Mind Your Own God Damn Business

As anyone who reads this blog with any kind of regularity knows, I tend to repeat myself. A lot. Sometimes I realize that I’m doing it, but most of the time, I don’t even know that I’m rehashing the same old ideas over and over. Once and a while, I’ll look back at my entries and find things that I have no recollection of writing. It will sound like something that I would write, but the only reason that I know that I was the one that came up with it is because it’s on my blog.

Anyway, one of the themes that I always have in heavy rotation is “My life at this age and the life that I imagined for myself at this age when I was 18 are two very different things.”

As luck would have it, last week’s Radiolab, there was a segment about a guy who died but had used a website where he could write a letter to himself that would send the letter off at some point in the future. The guy died, but a few years later, his family received the letter. This got me thinking about what is apparently my favorite subject: myself, 10 years ago.

"Who told you to take ofF the Spock ears? YOU KNOW I CAN'T FINISH IF YOU DON'T HAVE THE SPOCK EARS ON!!!"

When I was in my mid 20′s, it was incredibly painful for me think about how different my expectations of my life were from the reality, in part because I think it was the first time that I realized that I probably wasn’t going to be millionaire porking hot babes with four boobs in my space yacht like I had assumed I would be.

As I got into my late 20′s, I started to come to terms with it and realize that the vague, foggy teenage visions of my life weren’t very realistic (come on, I would be a billionaire, not a millionaire, and two boobs on a girl would be totally fine) and that even if I wasn’t the quarterback of the Denver Broncos, there were a lot of situations that I could be in at my age that were much, much worse than single with a bachelor’s degree. No kids, no debt, no felonies (miraculously) – I hadn’t accomplished everything that I wanted to, but I hadn’t painted myself into a corner, either.

Now that I’m about as late in my 20′s as I can be (I’ve got three more months left), 18 year old me just cracks me up.

Alright, I'm ready; where do I put my dick?

I’m far enough away from being a teen that I have more perspective on it than I used to, and I also spend quite a bit of time around 18 year olds, which helps me remember just how underdeveloped a brain is at that age. When I was a teen, I had acne, I was always mad at my parents for no good reason, I planned my week around the X-Files, I liked Limp Bizkit and I couldn’t touch a Playstation controller without getting an erection – is it really that shocking that I couldn’t accurately look ten years into the future?

And besides,  I was kind of a douche (some things never change, I guess). I think it would be pretty funny to chat with teenage me. I can only imagine the look on his face when I was like “You know how you’re living in your parent’s basement, going to school and not getting laid? Yeah – you’re gonna want to get nice and used to that. Oh, and your hair and that acne are both going to migrate from your head down to your back.” I can almost see his pimply, hairless jaw clenching as he slams the door to his room, cranks up the Limp Bizkit and starts screaming into a pillow and kicking his feet.

Here’s what I was thinking, though: I have reached the point where I don’t really remember what it was like to be me ten years ago anymore. People always say you’re a completely different person than you were when you were younger, which is true, but I never realized how true until I found those old journals that I mentioned last week. Sure, there are things I remember about being that age – I remember most of the things I did, the people I hung out with and the stuff I liked, but I’ve completely forgotten how I perceived everything around me. Looking at those old journals made me realize that I now view the world through a completely different set of lenses than I did in 1998. It was very strange, and made me a little bit sad that I didn’t have more documentation of my life from then. As much as seeing some of the things that I thought make me cringe, it was kind of neat to get a look at old me. I recently reconnected with an old friend on facebook that I hadn’t seen in years, and he saw pictures of my little sister and was like “Fuck! She’s a senior in college? I remember her wearing diapers!” It’s kind of like that, only with myself.

This makes me wonder: Should I start documenting everything that I’m thinking now so I can look back and laugh at myself when I’m 40?

One one hand, I’m guessing that if I see things differently now than I did ten years ago, the same thing will happen in another ten years, and I’ll have the same retarded, narcisistic desire to comb through my journals and laugh at myself.

On the other hand, let’s be honest: in ten years, I’ll be living in my parent’s basement, going to school and playing video games. It’s just how I am. I’m like the dude in Grandma’s Boy, except that guy had a job.

See you Wednesday.