2005-01-11 - 3:18 a.m.

Ah, 2004. I miss 2004. I really miss it.

I dunno. I also like to get sad and miss stuff, so I�m not surprised that I miss 2004.

I graduated in 1999, so I pretty much started my life the way I know it in 1999. Then, we had the millennium, and for the next few years, I got to coast on just getting started vibes. Now it�s 2005. I mean, if it�s math and we�re rounding up, it�s 2010. Know what I mean?

With time here, it�s not like a weekend, where every hour or so you know how far along you are, especially on Sunday.

It�s like starting another year of school and finding your locker and getting used to classes and the teachers can�t expect too much yet and then all of a sudden that day rolls around where you realize that things have been in sync for a while and it�s not the beginning anymore.

Or like Opening Day for baseball, but then interleague play kicks in and a couple of teams are already out of their divisional races, and it�s not the beginning anymore.

Whatever�s already been happening is probably going to come to it�s fruition, and the rules are fixed now for the most part--very few new things are going to be introduced, and it�s just a matter of waiting until the end, almost (but not exactly) like you�re guarding it to make sure that what�s supposed to happen does.

I don�t know if that makes me sad, that the clock is already starting to tick for me on a decade that most of us can�t even agree on a name for (I still like the �aughts,� and use it even though nobody knows what I�m talking about. Or do you like the �ohs� better? Do you? Do you really? Is that really what you want to call what you�re living in? The �ohs?� Okay, then cool. We�re in the �ohs� right now.).

Do you know how we Google friends now, or our own names, to see what�s there? It doesn�t work for me, because I share my name with a famous author my parents probably never heard of (not to be caustic, mind you). Every now and then, when I can�t escape the nostalgia and can�t resist the urge to wrap it around my neck like the chord that it is, I Google my first girlfriend�s name. She made it to Arizona all right, and hysterically argued her bleeding heart points on some ASU chat board, probably in 1995, until somebody said something mean about her, and it became her quest to bring the guy down and then she gave up.

That�s what happened to her.

My friend Maggie is on a hydroponic farm in Steven�s Point, Wisconsin, and the year is 1998, maybe?

That�s what happened to her.

My friend Emily is forever riding the B line up and down Comm Ave, and she grew her hair out, and she looks happy.

That�s what happened to her.

My friend Ericka got into a fight with another one of my friends in 2003, I think, and as far as I�m supposed to be concerned is wandering around in her backyard every night looking for her pet turtle, Tilly. I heard she was pregnant, but she probably had her baby by now.

My friend Tommy drew his first puff off of a cigarette (one of mine) by the Kendall station in 1996 or so, and that�s the last thing he ever did, as far as I know.

I dunno. People today have these friendster and myspace thingies, but what I want is something I don�t know if I can have.

I don�t know if we can meet up with each other when we die, but I�d love to. We could all drink beer and play football or poker or video games or music and remember exactly where we left off and who we were then. And the people who were jerks will realize it and stop being jerks, and we all will realize how we were all were being jerks and so we�ll all stop being jerks, and after we stop being jerks for a few minutes, we�ll have so much more room to grow and all of a sudden we�ll magically start being able to express ourselves better and understand ourselves better and then when we�re ready for it we�ll realize that there was no magic involved, just insight, but we already had that part figured out anyway.

I had a sit-n�-spin when I was four. My mother read books about British frogs to me. We had a black and white TV. That was pretty much it.

Today my mother, who can type faster than almost anyone but who at the same time can�t use a computer, my mother I sometimes talk to each other on cellphones. Both of us. I know people who have never NOT had a computer in the house. When they�re my age, they might know someone who grew up in a household that always had broadband or better, and when that person is my age, they might know someone who has never seen an 8-track, record, cassette, CD, DVD, video game cartridge, or beta tape put into use for any non-anacronistic reason.

Some day, maybe 20 years from now, someone is going to figure out how to track down a person from memory, and some day, maybe 30 years from now, someone is going to write a beautiful program where I might be able to find a person I miss, and perfectly share my memory of that person as well as who I was then, with this person that I so miss, but only rich people are going to get to use it, and some day, maybe 40 years from now, we�ll all get to use this technology and this beautiful program, but not for what it was intended for, but to say wazzaaap, and we�ll have to look at ads too, but it�ll be too late, because at that point all we�ll have been doing with each other our entire lives was looking at ads and saying wazzzaap anyway.

Whoah, Bleak.

2005 is going to be good. I think it is, and so it will be, which is a lie, but less of one that it would have been in 2002. Maybe the guy I was when I was a junior in high school might be a little bummed out if he got a chance to hang out with me today, but he�d also be a little impressed and a little relieved. And I don�t like that guy so much anyway (although I�d love to meet him. I don�t know him anymore and I have some questions I�d like him to answer honestly, or as honestly as he could, although I�d know if he was lying). To that end, since I attained some sense of actual self-awareness (what, maybe fifth grade? Probably then.), I can�t claim that I�ve had my �life together� (consistently) more honestly than I can today.

What I CAN�T do is THIS. What I�ve been doing right now. The thing I�m really bummed about is that I feel that I�m entering or have entered the prime of my life right now, and I still haven�t shaken THIS. This terrible trap, this terrifying feeling I get whenever I meet somebody, where I already start missing them, even if, and especially because, and despite the fact that, I haven�t made any effort to get to know that person. This whole idea that I�m wasting my life, when I�ve known for years that I�m always going to feel that way every second of my precious little life and every second miss the precious little moments that happened a long time ago when I was feeling exactly the same way I do now. Even though when I re-read this paragraph years or weeks from now, I�m GOING to shudder, and I�m going to miss where I was back then when I wrote it.

Narcissism notwithstanding, I think the problem is that the guy who I am is either always listening to the nostalgic guy who is disappointed at me for wasting my life, which is completely illogical, or the other person, who just told me that something I just said was illogical (BUT who knows why that was funny).

And I�m so decisive that I want them both to win.

We�re not talking angel and devil on the shoulder. That�d be nice and comforting, though, although a little hokey and midwestern. Wouldn�t it be great if there was always a guy telling you what do do, AND a guy telling you what not to do, just so you don�t miss anything?

Not me. We�re talking really good advisor and a different really good advisor, both of whom really hate each other sometimes, for reasons sometimes unbeknownst to me, probably because the guy that�s me doesn�t like to mediate at all, because he thinks he�ll suck at it.

And he�s easily fooled at �things are starting to get better, there�s no problem, just shut up and let me handle it� pitches.

Case in point. I can accept both of these endings to this entry:

I have to stop waking up every morning having to deal with an existential crisis, every goddamn morning, before I do a single other goddamn thing.

I have to listen to myself and accept my nostalgic tendencies, and maybe even learn to love that side of myself, and learn to deal with with my maudlin tendencies.

And then here�s this:

Those two statements are in direct conflict with each other.

No, but wait, they�re exactly the same thing, and I should just accept that I always have those two influences going. It�s what makes me who I am.

And, believe me, this could go on and on. Whichever is the person who tells my fingers to type is getting tired, and the person who will start to re-read this and then throw his arms up in the air and just run the goddamn spellchecker will soon do just that and maybe enjoy the last few minutes of the evening, listening to headphone speakers.

2005 is going to be the year where I REALLY sit down with myself to make sure everything checks out okay.

No wait. I�d blow up if that happened. Seriously, I would.

Which means accept it wins!

Wait, that makes no sense.

Let�s just settle with setting a few goals and making them. That seems to make everyone happy.

It�s going to be a long year.

Good. I haven�t had one of those for fifteen straight. I wonder what they�re like.