Really, Mr. Guidance Counselor?

 There must be people out there who figure out somewhere between 13 and 30 years old what they want to do with their lives and pursue it with single minded vision and focus. I have to believe that these people have existed throughout the whole of recorded human history. I may even know some of them. A few people come to mind though not many. I am not among them. 

My last quick post got me thinking hard about my personal growth and development. It got me wondering if there was a junction in the road where I could have realized some of the more fulfilling aspects of my life earlier on. This sounds suspiciously like rumination, but it isn't. I am looking back at my life and seeing what lessons might be learned in retrospective. 

In Kindergarten the local news came to my elementary school and asked a bunch of us what we wanted to be when we grew up. If I am recalling accurately I said I wanted to be a meteorologist. I remember my Mom laughing and joking as she told the story with a mixture of pride and humor. I suspect someone on the film crew prompted it. I don't recall that, but I am sure it made for a cute soft news spot.

I can say I had no interest in actually being a meteorologist. At four the primary thing I wanted to be was able to fit in with the other kids. Little did Little David know that he would continue to feel that way for the next twelve years or so. Honestly, I still never feel like I belong anywhere. The change for me is that I enjoy the feeling now. I am at home and fit in with myself. I am comfortable in my skin and all the years of angst feel embarrassing in retrospect. The healthy part of my brain is reminding me to not feel cringy about who I have been or how I have behaved at any age. I was who I thought I needed to be in that place and time. It is accepted because it is done and cannot be changed. 

Interestingly enough that feeling of not belonging went away a few times in my misspent youth. The groups I played Magic and D&D with in and after school just made that stuff vanish. I could not care about the silliness of it all because there was always a deck to build or a gaming session to plan. That is why I am a gamer  to this day. It really started helping me around age 14. I would likely have taken a darker road without some of that in my life. Plus, it kept me far too broke to buy drugs or much alcohol. RPG books aren't cheap. 

The rest of high school I was pretty constantly seeking the validation of physical affection. I honestly had planned to become an Air Force pilot until I found out I was too tall and my eye sight was too poor. After that I vaguely slapped around the idea of going to school for Computer Science because I enjoyed programming and building computers. I said it before and I will say it again hazy dreams produce hazy results. I was about as committed to programming actively as I am now to getting a book published which is to say not at all.

I wasn't particularly a gifted PC builder. I knew how to build a computer from the component parts. I liked solving the puzzle when someone else had broken a system. Mostly it was fun to figure out how it all fit together. As far as any real joy of playing on the computer that came from video games, porn, and getting into a ton of stuff I shouldn't have in the early days of the internet. 

I had a steady girlfriend for the majority of high school. I got into the expected trouble. Granted I was careful and didn't have my first child until after I had graduated. There were a whole stack of reasons that I went a bit crazy that year. Not having a sense of purpose or direction played into that. 

The wonderful part of having a child you love and want to be responsible for is that the big hypotheticals that you are hung up on are suddenly eclipsed by bottle feeding, diaper changes, and the great realization that you have absolutely no clue how to guide another human through life when you are clueless. This taught me a fantastic skillset. I can be absolutely lost in time and space and still put on a brave face and figure out quite a lot of things. 

Which, in spite of my ironic title for this post, is the reality of my life of stumbling into my groove. I have spent many years chasing things that I thought would fulfill me and didn't. I probably would have gotten a lot more out of investing time improving my cooking than all of the romantic relationships I used as distraction from my feelings over the years. 

Happiness can be as simple as cubed steak with dirty mashed potatoes or sweet and spicy stir fry. You might also find respect and envy for that Spider-man bowl. I think the beauty of life is that most of us find the things we love in spite of what we set out to do. I wouldn't have predicted that middle age would find me challenging myself to try out increasingly difficult things in the kitchen nor that each failure or triumph would whisper into my brain," David, you have always enjoyed cooking. Why haven't you been doing it with this level of passion for years?" 

The answer to that is that I wasn't in a place to enjoy and value the simplicity of it all. The same thing is true about work. I don't think anyone would have picked my career trajectory, but I am really happy doing what I am doing. I don't know that if I had stumbled onto it earlier in life that I would have been in a place to do it. 

Everything comes in the place and time that it is meant to. If we are truly blessed we are wise enough to recognize the value of things as we discover them. I know that there have been a ton of things that I have not been ready for that ended up for the best. A closed door can be a really great opportunity as well. 

Now, if I can find some wisdom to help me cope with my sore back life will be good. Ah well, time to get the cheesecakes wrapped up and put into the fridge to cool for a while. 

I don't know if these things even make any real sense anymore, but I am going to keep writing them.