I'll be 25 years old soon.

I feel sad because I am closing in on 25 years old, so nothing that I do, no matter how good, can be special. Not REALLY special.

In college, if you could string two words together to describe the emotional turmoil that sprang from your fecund loins of academia, then it was something special. Something to be shared. A commonality between you and the fifteen other budding souls that were quickly becoming the best thing that has ever happened to you, ever, I totally swear.

But i am out of college now.

I can no longer be a child prodigy.

I can no longer surprise you with hidden talents; I've had enough time to develop synthetic ones.

It's creepy to have a crush on someone now. It's marrying time.

I hate it.

I feel like walking around repeating "I could-a been a contendah." And I don't know where my hope for a better life has disappeared to...

I'm pretty sure that I feel that life after a vibrant community (in this case, college) is about as close to that moment immediately preceding death as you can get. The light at the end of the tunnel is the receding one through which I can see what I used to be. In college. How pathetic. Have I really peaked so soon?

In many ways I feel that in college I attained every dream that had crossed through my adolescent brain at some point or another... and now all that is left is to try and recreate that same experience in "real life." And that is really depressing to me.

I need to be surprised again. I need to take stupid risks with no idea as to why I'm taking them. I need to find my worth again. I need to be open to new dreams. I need to be able to abandon the mediocre now for a better one. How's that for being Zen?

Not that I really have that much of a choice. My life is going to change completely in the next year. I have no idea what that means yet. After the year's completed, I'm hopefully going to re-read this posting and laugh at how wasteful all the worry was, that if I only knew how much better the future was going to be than I wouldn't be concerned at all, only very excited. But there's no way of knowing. Next year I might be dead. That'd be a pretty big life change.

Of course, the idea that I might be dead within a year is quite motivating. Theoretically that means that I can take all the risks that I want, without thought as to the repercussions. But I've already learned that it doesn't quite work that way. Especially with women. A woman doesn't seem to be flattered when they become your "if I die tomorrow, I don't want to have never told you how much I love the idea of possibly being with you" girl. It tends to work against the "I'm a valid long-term partner" vibe. Because, remember, crushes are now creepy. It's marrying time. I'm so very much out of my depth.

I feel sad because I'm closing in on 25 years old, and I can no longer become more successful than someone else my age has already been. My angle of "he's successful and he doesn't even try" is no longer valid. If it were the case, I would have been successful.

But as it is, I'm closing in on 25 years old and have nothing to show for it.

I knew I should have taken that right turn at Albuquerque.