Stuck in a Moment

I'm at my second-to-last shift here at Sever Hall Media Services (Hopefully forever, but who knows?), and I am realizing that I started here almost ten years ago (I believe September of 1998), and I haven't come very far in that time. And here I was criticizing Marvel Comics for making Spider-Man "forget" his marriage to Mary Jane and start living life like a kid again, with all the financial problems and girl trouble he had when he was sixteen. Um, I have all those problems, too, and I'm probably older than Spidey (in the world of comics, he's about 30.)

So, yes, it's strange, but I'm working on it. I just registered for my first class since deciding to go for my Masters, and it starts tomorrow. I'm three courses in, with seven to go, but the last one is my thesis, so it's six really. Doing the math, if I take one each semester and one during the summers , I can have a degree by at least 2010. Technically, I could take two summer courses since there are two summer sessions, but I'll be good to myself and say one. What's the rush?

Sometimes, I haven't changed at all, but when I think back to just five years ago at this time, when I was engaged and searching for apartments with Keri, and now I'm living on my own in Boston and going for a Masters, then I guess I have. I guess I've also grown more cynical, and developed quite a taste for alcohol, but those are minor alterations really, ones that come with adulthood. Going back to when I started here almost a decade ago, well, then we're talking a fake marriage to fool my friends and splitting time between here and the video store. Guess I'm pretty glad none of that panned out.

While not all of this is anything to really be proud of, I look around and think about some of the people I know who probably would have benefited from these kinds of experiences. Not to get too Captain Kirk, but it made me who I am. Experience is the best teacher, and it does make you a more well-rounded individual. Hey, how could I be angry with the world if I hadn't gone out and experienced it?

Not that I wouldn't go back and change a few things if I could. I don't buy into all that "I wouldn't change the past because every situation leads you to where you are" bullshit. I would go back to high school and tell myself to not be such a wimp, and to talk to women, and to dress better. I would go back to college and tell myself to forget about Audra and fuck every woman I could find, just because it was college and everyone at Emerson was fucking except me. I would have broken up with Keri at the first sign of trouble, and not taken three days to do it, and I would never allow her to find out that I had made out with someone else.

I would do all of these things, and there ain't no one that can tell me that it wouldn't make me a better, less angry person today. Maybe that's what experience should teach us: what we've done wrong, and why we would fix it if we could.