500 Words A Day-Day 11

Yesteryear Revisited

Today I came home from work and put on my “Go To” music selection: Counting Crows album “August And Everything After.” This album was the soundtrack to the year I came alive and finally figured out what it meant to be alive. 1994.

I like to tell people that I learned more about myself during my first semester at U of A as a freshman than I did in the entire 18 years prior to that. That’s the truth. But I learned more about EVERYTHING ELSE in 1994. To this day it is the year I would most like to live over.

In 1994 I moved out of the dorms and got my first apartment (with roommates, of course). I bought my first car and got to live under the pressure of having a car payment and insurance premiums to pay. I got my first credit card. I got my first utility bill in my name and my name in the phone book for the first time. I always think of the movie “The Jerk” when I think about that.

1994 was the year I got my first glimpse of what having a job meant. Prior to that it was just something I did to keep some change in my pockets, but when I got that car and the car payment and the rent to pay I realized that working was something I needed to do to keep myself afloat and out of my parent’s house (which, for whatever reason, is ALL I ever wanted to do when I was growing up). I started my “career” with KB Toys in 1994. I also got my first serious girlfriend that I actually liked that year. I found out the importance of finding your alcohol on sale that year, too. At that point one of the most important things I ever found out in my life, to be honest. Even more important than having the girlfriend I liked, unfortunately.

I also found heartbreak that year. I found what it was like to be truly alone in the world. I found out what it is like to REALLY want to be a part of a group and not be able to be a part of it. I found a well of creativity that year that didn’t exist before that. I wrote, and wrote and wrote that year. Good things, bad things. Heartache. Loneliness. Everything had a way of making it onto paper. So many pages of writings in my backlog come from that year.

And this CD playing right now (well, not actually a CD, it’s on my iTunes) embodies nearly everything that was important to me that year. As soon as I put it in I am right back to where I was the first time I heard it. I’m sitting in my room on a mattress on the floor on the second story of University West Apartments in Flagstaff, looking out the window on a June afternoon, soaking it all in.

“And every time she sneezes I believe it’s love and oh Lord I’m not ready for this sort of thing. She’s talking in her sleep, it’s keeping me awake and Anna begins to toss and turn. And every word is nonsense but I understand and oh Lord I’m not ready for this sort of thing.”—Anna Begins

Turns out I really wasn’t ready for any of that sort of thing. But damn if it wasn’t a good time. I’d go back in a second. In a SECOND!

I really wish I could feel like that about my life now.

B!