I was clicking on pictures of my high school reunion on Facebook yesterday, feeling about 70% sad I wasn’t able to attend. I saw a couple faces that looked familiar, but slightly different, like the updated logo on the Pepsi can. People were older and fatter and had less hair, but they seemed to be having a good time, or faking it rather well. There were at least a handful of people I would have liked to have seen in 3D instead of on my flatscreen monitor.
The other 30% of me was glad I did not have to question every life decision I’ve made in the last 10 years, that I didn’t have to wonder what my life could have been like if I’d turned left instead of right, if I’d met a guy or had a baby, if I’d started a business or gotten another job. I’m pretty happy with my life, even with my headache and the recession and the toilet that seems to be breaking again. Yet, everyone can fall victim to that Virus of the Mind as Heather Nova put it. When faced with a decision between entering the past of my reunion or making future relationships with other bloggers, it was easy to chose the future.
I was also glad that I did not have to summarize the past 10 years of my life in a succinct format. Although I did not attend the reunion, I’m sure the most common question there that night was, “So what have you been up to?” I tried to think of what I would have said, which made me try to remember what was going on in my life when I graduated high school. I’ve come so far since then it’s like I’m on a different coast. But if I had to give summary of the landmarks along the way, I would say:
Got fat, got a cat, lost weight, left the state, wrote blog, wrote book, check me out on Facebook.
It’s less than 100 characters and it even rhymes! (I cheated by rhyming “book” with “Facebook,” so I’ll obviously never be the Poet Laureate.) If you had to describe the last 10 years of your life in 100 characters or less, what would you say? Let me know in the comments. You can check your answer’s length in the box below, but remember to actually post it in the comments area. And if you go over a little, I doubt anyone will care.