College Smells Funny

When I was younger, I never wanted to be anyone else. Well, that's a lie. I used to spend hours pretending I was Link from the Legend of Zelda on his never-ending princess-saving quest. And on more than one of my birthdays, I wished that I would turn into Garfield - the cat, not the dead president - as soon as I blew out the candles on my cake. But the point is, I never wanted to be anyone else who was real. I never wanted to trade lives with sports stars or actors or scientists or leather-panted rockers.

Looking back on it now, I sometimes think I used to be an idiot.

All I seem to do these days is wish I were someone else, someplace else, doing something infinitely more exciting and rewarding. Right now, I'm in a study-carrel in the basement of the Purchase College library wishing I was still in college. And I hated college.

Sometime in my early-to-mid twenties I guess I just lost the will to accept myself for who I am and my life for what it is. I think it was right around the time I realized, I mean actually began to understand, that the only thing I can be, in the end, is whatever it is I make myself into. And making yourself into something, into anything - baker, butcher, businessman, beloved - that's really hard to do.

I kind of wish it would just happen already. That I wouldn't have to work at it and I'd just turn into something or someone. I'd have made something of myself without doing anything at all. And I guess I can do that, just sit around and wait for my life to fall into my lap. But I'm pretty sure if I did that, before I knew it, I'd have made myself into a bum. And I'm pretty sure I'd be better off as me now as me as a bum.

Still, how much cooler would life be if I were Ed Norton instead? 8 million, that's how much.