I can still remember May 29th, 2000.
It was a Monday, and amazingly, it was pretty un-remarkable - it started off the same way that Mondays that year started for me... By walking the three blocks from home to work, unlocking the door, and disarming the alarm before sitting down to take care of things.
The only thing that makes May 29th, 2000 special is that it was the day after May 28th, 2000... Which happened to be the day that I graduated college.
Sometimes, it feels as though I have spent the better part of the last three years trying to get back to May 28th... Or at least ignore the fact that May 29th (and all the subsequent days after it) have gone by.
So - as I sit here doing battle with the endless forms associated with starting a 401(k) plan, to be followed by the annual ritual of filling out my tax returns - I wonder how it is that I can hold so much hope for the future, and yet fear it at the same time.
I remember in college one day I played tennis with my friend Connor. I managed to get to the ball earlier than I normally did, and subsequently hit the ball with a more closed face than usual (in part because of getting to the ball early threw my timing off). For the first time in four years of playing tennis, I managed to induce "topspin" on the ball. And at that point, I realized that I had just "advanced" my tennis game to the next level. Since then. I've come to realize that most of sports (and other activities that requre practice) is about plateaus and slopes. In the begining, you climb the learning curve quickly... then you reach a plateau (which lasts for a random amount of time), before you hit another slope, that takes you to the next plateau. In tennis, the early stages involve learning the forehand, then once that's mastered, moving on to the backhand, and eventually the serve. In golf, the early stages are defined by putting, then chipping, and then finally driving (although not necessairly in that order).
The older I get, the more I realize that life falls in the same pattern. More importantly - relationships also fall in the same pattern (but that will be left for latter).
But the one thing that scares me right now is that the path is no longer clear. Unlike sports, the skill sets are small, relatively universally understood as requirements, pretty easy to map out. For the first part of my life, it too was pretty mapped out for me : elementary school, jr. high school, high school, and then college.
And now.... its after college... and I don't know if I'm on the plateau, or the slope, and its scarring the crap out of me.... So, as much as I understand that Ma 28th, 2000 will never exsist other than as fond memories of a time that has passed, I still find myself longing to get back to a time - which in romanticized retrospect was simplier, easier, and better understood.
Posted by Brice at April 5, 2003 06:41 PM