Reflection #1/40

I remember one night in the late 1990s when I was standing in the parking lot of Clay Villa apartments, where I lived with my college friend Steve C., and looking out at what little I could see of Lexington, and thinking, “Oh my God, I’ve done it, I’m living in an apartment in the city, I’m an adult, and I can do whatever I want.” It’s tempting to say that I was foolishly naïve. If you looked at my life at that time from the outside, you would see that I was working a series of crappy jobs and living in a fairly crappy apartment and I didn’t have a whole lot going on. But from the inside, living in that place in that time, it really was wonderful. So what if I didn’t go to grad school? I was doing what I wanted to do, which mainly consisted of reading and hanging out with my friends. I was not overly worried about the future. I was optimistic that, before long, I would be published, and possibly writing the adventures of the Justice Society for DC Comics, but I was in no hurry. If I feel regret when I look back on my life in the 1990s, it’s not about the things I did or the things I didn’t do; it’s that I can’t feel that way anymore, like I’ve got all the time in the world.