Random: Not Food-Related Post

I do tend to shift (originally, "shit," but I caught my Freudian Slip) my focus from time to time. Lately, I've been scanning, and as of yesterday, watching a way too much Battlestar Galactica.

My scanning project is simply something that needs to get done. I need to put my baggage in a container that fits in the palm of my hand. As the project progresses, though, I have to face all that baggage. The life I used to live. The one that had a plan and the energy of youth. Instead of living, I'm documenting living. Why? Because I'm afraid of forgetting all the good that has happened in my life.

My recent scan mini-project has been to process all my previous awards. This goes back far. It reminds me of everything I used to do. The sports, the good grades, the clubs, etc. Somehow, I remember all the bad with it. All the failures, too. The work unfinished, the disappointments. That was when I could count the disappointments on my fingers. Now everywhere I navigate my mind, there are minefields of time-ticking bombs implanted special-order by yours truly nearly everyday of my six years in college. They represent every promise I made to myself, and every let-down. Success was not my area of expertise in the second half of the last decade.

I see an award from high school, a scholarship - never sent them a thank you card. There's more than one that fits into that category. I am thankful, especially now, to have received all the money and recognition I did. A science award, why? I did terrible in honors bio, and ended up dropped out of ap chem. My middle school art awards only remind me of my after-school art club painting that was never completed. Cross country awards. I did that for all four years, and on my last year, I was the disobedient brat who refused to run an extra block or something. At least the coach was mature about it. But these were the good days...

College became my civil union with disappointment. It's enough to say that I won't open that stinky can of worms.

Somehow, I made it through. Thankfully, the human body can take a lot of abuse. But the scars remain even if nobody else can see them. And so, it's been nearly two years, and yes, I'm still recovering. Please, leave me alone about it. Don't ask me these questions, like what am I doing with my life. Everyday, I try to find answers to questions most people don't ask themselves. And I work on projects that are meaningless to everyone, but myself. I'm not sitting around playing games, enjoying my twenty-somethings like I should be.  It's a wonder I'm not clinically depressed with all the negative thoughts running rampant in this mind.

But second to death, I'm most afraid right now, that all this was a waste. That all the talent and potential I have, or at least had, will never develop into something worthwhile. I think there may be two types of people out there: people who get degrees and jobs, and people who get degrees and never put them to use in their field of study. I hope I'm wrong, and I hope that I don't stay in the latter category indefinitely.