Back to the Future

So, here I am with this brand new blog and how long did it take me to post entry number two? Why, only a little over a month. Thirty-five days, to be exact. I knew I'd be absolutely horrible at updating this thing. Oh, well, I guess I'll just try and do better, though probably nothing will change.

Earlier today (or yesterday now, I guess) I attended a surprise 50th birthday party in my Mom's honor. Her birthday is actually Wednesday, but my dad and Mary, my mom's BFF, thought they'd celebrate early by having a celebration involving her family and some close friends. A very nice time was had by all.

As I reflect back on the event, it makes me wonder what my life will be like when/if I turn 50. I have to admit that I'm a little worried about it. By the time she was my age, my mom had already: a) gotten her degree, b) held a position in her chosen career field (which she would later give up for another, but still...), c) been married and had two kids. All of these things are just pipe dreams for me at this point. I look at her life and I look at what little I've done with mine (with many more advantages) and it makes me feel like I've completely failed by not doing anything more than serving a mission, accumulating a buttload of college credits without a degree, and holding a bunch of jobs that I hate. It makes me wonder-am I going to have a family and good friends there to celebrate that milestone with me, or am I going to be alone, celebrating by doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary?

I guess I shouldn't be so doom-and-gloom about it. After all, I could be in jail, in jail, paying child support, or any and all of the above. I've heard many stories of people completing their degrees in their 40s and 50s and beyond and other "it's never too late" stories. Still, though, I always thought that I was capable of so much more than what I've done, and the success of my parents serves as a constant reminder of that. Maybe one of these days something will finally click inside me and I can finally use it as the kick in the butt that I need. I can only hope, anyway.

On a completely unrelated note, John Bowker can go straight to hell.

"Here I go, again..."

Welcome to my brand new online journal (I guess the kids these days call them "blogs." I know, I'm old)! As you might tell from the title of this post (Thanks, Whitesnake), I am not new to keeping a record of my dealings and doings and thought processes. As briefly alluded to earlier, back in my halcyon days of being in my early 20s, I was a member of a website called "Open Diary," where I would regularly write about lots of things with lots of sharp wit and funny insights. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It gave me confidence in my writing abilities (which were crucial to my field of study at the time) and I always got a lot of great comments from others, which in turn introduced me to some really cool people.

I really don't know why I stopped. Perhaps it was my own natural laziness. Perhaps I thought I had run out of things to write about. Perhaps I just didn't have the energy. Who knows? I only know that I stopped posting for a few months and, well, I guess the site administrators didn't like idle bloggers, as when I went to log on, I got an error message saying my online journal didn't exist and I had to start a new one. This really disappointed me, and I've sworn off of Internet diaries ever since.

Until now.

Looking at the proliferation of bloggers now, I'd like to think that I was ahead of my time with"Being BluesStud" (the name of that journal--don't ask me how I came up with it). However, with the Internet being as big as it is, I think it was only a matter of time before online personal record keeping (I'm running out of synonyms for "blogging") became a cool thing to do. And now, as usual, I'm the one that's having to catch up with the in-crowd. *sigh* Such is my fate!

So, to those of you that I know here on this online community (which are few), and to those of you that I don't (which are many, and which will hopefully be subtracted from this column and added to the "know" column), I welcome you and hope it will be worth your while reading. Although this is a personal diary and most of it will consist of things relevant to me and my feelings and thoughts, I do also like to write things that are pleasing to others. So, leave me comments and tell me what I'm doing wrong. Oh, yeah, and I guess some positive feedback would be nice, too. First one to leave a post gets a prize! :-)