Myself, not that I did something so beyond recognition but I think about where I am now a lot.

I was a very naïve, somewhat sheltered Midwestern kid to a 17 year old mother who married (someone else) happily when I was just six months old. In elementary school and into middle school I was never popular and kind of chunky. I’ve always been a computer geek and started making websites when I was around 10 (I was bored a lot).

Heading into high school I made tons of friends in different groups. I had friends in the “drug crowd” but wasn’t into drugs myself. I graduated early only to go into working in fast food and never could finish college.

In my 20s I got really into weed and drinking and I had a friend who inherited a ton of money and long story short, we moved to Los Angeles. Tons of partying and lots of hard drugs later, we moved back but I came back alone two years later with nothing more than a backpack, computer monitor and $800.

10+ years later, I don’t party nor take drugs and have a rather boring life as a web application developer after ~5 years in warehouse jobs.

I’m generally very happy, but I’m very frustrated with the world after having lived in a big city now for almost half my life and having not been raised knowing how exactly the world works — if took me much, much longer to get where I am than those optimistic 90s teachers had me believe it would. Some days I daydream and wish I could go back to those wild days living it up, taking a couple mollies and not having a single a care in the world.