My first semester of college was filled to the brim with sadness, anxiety, stress, and sheer terror. Up until that point, I had never felt so low in my life (and unfortunately, I wish I could go back to that moment and live there forever, since the present day feels much worse than anything I experienced at the age of 18), and it showed in my academics. I was studying computer engineering at the time, because I thought that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I went through a few different phases in my interests, and I wanted to develop video games at that point, so I studied computer engineering. And, about 2 months into the semester, I went through a rough patch

I was not the greatest student, and spent a lot of time slacking off now that I had this freedom to do whatever I wanted to do without anyone telling me not to do it. I played a lot of video games. I became very social. I had a lot of friends. I also had very bad study habits and, eventually…very bad grades to show for my study habits (or lack thereof)

The first Calc 1 exam came and went, and I remember feeling so overwhelmed by the exam. I didn’t even attempt most of the problems, because I had no idea what to do, and eventually got so frustrated with the packet in front of me that I turned it in, almost completely blank. I didn’t want to look at it. I didn’t want to stress out.

We got our scores back and I was presented with the lowest score I’ve ever received on an exam. Not only was it a bad grade, but it was the lowest score I think I ever received on any exam I’ve ever taken: 8/60. Or roughly 13%.

At that exact moment, I realized that I didn’t have what it would take to be an engineer. I realized that I didn’t have what it would take for me to achieve that goal. And that scared me.

You know about fight or flight response? How the body and mind are essentially hard wired to respond to a perceived threat by either confrontation or escape? How we, as humans, are intricately designed to either face something head on or distance ourselves from that thing as much as humanly possible? How we are intentionally designed to do one of two things, and how those two things are polar opposites of each other? Well, my body and mind opted for the latter: flight.

I had a friend at the time named Megan. And Megan wanted me to get an education. And when I realized that I didn’t have what it would take to be an engineer, she was the first person I went to for help.

I remember us sitting at a table at the library (if I were to go to that library, I could probably identify the exact table we sat at), and I remember her wheeling a whiteboard over to the table, uncapping a marker, and saying “what are your options here?”

We sat there and brainstormed ideas. I sat there for a while, and she patiently stood next to the whiteboard and wrote down all the ideas I had to get myself out of the situation I was in without completely abandoning college. And we eventually landed on one. I left the library that day, knowing that I was going to change my major from computer engineering to this thing called management information systems. I wanted to do something computer related, but the path had changed. I felt some hope, but I also still had some doubt. I dropped Calc 1, went back to Pre Calc, and proceeded to continue to do poorly in all my classes. I hadn’t learned how to study. I hadn’t learned how to learn. I didn’t want to ask anyone for help, because I didn’t want to bother other people. I didn’t want to prevent them from learning. I felt like it was me against the world. But I still had Megan. We would hang out and eat ice cream and talk and laugh and have all sorts of fun still. But even that wouldn’t last forever.

And then, when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I hit a bump in the road. And the moment I hit that bump, the wheels fell off entirely. Megan and I had a falling out a few weeks after that day at the library, and my soul was crushed. My path had changed, the person who had helped me find that path had abandoned me (at least, in my perception at the time), and I fell into a really bad depression. I stopped going to class. I stopped getting out of bed, at one point. I would sleep a lot and sit around a lot and do a whole lot of nothing.

Every grade that wasn’t already affected by my lack of studying was almost immediately affected by my lack of confidence in any idea that I would ever be okay. The semester ended, I went back home, and waited. And sat around. And did nothing…except wait.

I was in the bathroom at my childhood home and I got an email saying that final grades had been posted. On my phone, I logged into my account, and opened my first ever grade report from my first semester of college, to see that I was on what the university refers to as “academic probation”

And then, on the same page, saw why: a GPA of 0.69.

Nobody hated me more in that moment than I did. Nobody felt more at odds with me in that moment than I did. And I was so angry, but significantly more sad than anything. And even more than that, I was depressed.

I remember asking my mom if I could borrow her car, since I wanted to go drive around for a bit, and she told me that was okay. I grabbed the keys to her car out of the bowl in the basement, opened the garage door, got in her car, and left.

By my childhood home, there’s a bridge. This bridge crosses over the interstate, and I remember having the conscious thought when I was in high school that, if life ever got so bad that I decided to end it, I was going to jump off that bridge. And, that day, I drove up the hill and took a left, then turned onto the street that leads to that bridge. And, in the few seconds it took for me to get to the bridge, I had that thought cross my mind: if life ever got so bad that I decided to end it, I was going to jump off that bridge. And, as I was driving down that road, the last bit of that statement reverberated in my mind: I was going to jump off that bridge.

I drove down the street, and, as I was about to cross the bridge, another thought intruded: “But Anthony, what if it gets better?”

And, as I was crossing the bridge, foot on the gas the entire time, yet another thought chimed in: “It won’t, and everyone who’s ever told you it will is lying to you”

I crossed the bridge without slowing down, and as soon as I got to the stoplight, one last thought showed up in my mind: “don’t kill yourself. You need to prove them wrong. You need to prove that life doesn’t get any better”

In that moment, I decided to fight.

Today is Tuesday, February 4th, 2025. I ended up dropping out of college. Twice. I work a full time job at a TV station as a newscast director. Today, I was told that I’m extremely disrespectful and that all of the morning directors don’t like me and think that I’m not fun to work with. In 2024, I was one misinformed decision away from being raped by one of our morning show producers. I was screamed at, I was told that I was horrible, I was blamed for all these problems, and I was abused. If I had been in slightly different situations or been in the situations I was in even moments earlier or later than when I actually was, my life would be over at this point. I would be dead right now. I’ve been torn down, I’ve been insulted, I’ve been threatened, I’ve been told that I would never succeed, I’ve been discriminated against for being young and uneducated, and I’ve cried more since I started directing than I ever have in any other job I’ve ever had.

It’s a little after 8:30pm. I have to be at work at 3am on February 5th. And I’m going to get up in the morning, drive to work in the freezing cold weather, and work for 10 hours tomorrow. And I might be tired and I might feel defeated by this whole thing, but I will be at work tomorrow. And I will fight for all 10 hours that I’m there. And when my time is up, I’ll go home.

But I’ll be back.

Over the last 8 months or so, my life has been filled with so much uncertainty, so much betrayal, so much fear, and more plot twists than I can count. I’ve been abused this year. I’ve been screamed at this year. I’ve been belittled this year. I’ve been told that I’d never make it. I almost quit my job twice. I’ve cried more this year than I have for a while. And, when this was mentioned to HR as being the result of treatment by someone I work with, it was brushed off as “you’ve survived this long, I’m sure you can keep going”

And yet, the nightmare is over. Why?

I went to mass on Christmas Eve with my family. I wasn’t looking forward to this. My family has kinda been on the edge of implosion for a while now, and every moment I have to spend with them, I’m constantly trying to find a way out. And tonight was no different: I was looking for a way out. I was looking to escape. And by no coincidence, I wasn’t able to find one. So I went to mass with my family

I sat next to my sister Monica and her daughter, Hani. Monica’s daughter, whose dad is my sister’s ex boyfriend, was the highlight of the mass for me, in terms of entertainment value. She’s still a baby and was doing normal baby things, and Monica spent a lot of the time holding her daughter. I remember the night Monica and her boyfriend broke up, and seeing Monica sitting on the couch at my dad’s house at one in the morning, absolutely defeated by this situation, is a memory that I’ll never forget, no matter how hard I may try (and no matter what abuse I go through). But she showed up tonight with her daughter and they went to mass with us, because, whether she believes it or not, her nightmare is over too

The priest talked tonight about how Jesus was born in Bethlehem after his parents had traveled there for the census, which had been called by the world rulers at the time. And how the whole story doesn’t revolve around these people who have been empowered by the world around them, but rather focuses on two young people and an infant. While the world focused on and allowed their lives to be upended by the big and mighty and powerful people, God focused (and continues to focus) on the normalcy of two people, who happen to have an extraordinary faith that God will provide them with the strength to carry on. And by being given the strength that had been promised, Mary gives birth to the son of God, who would upend the worry and doubt that we as people all have, and that I’ve been feeling a lot of these past few months.

The priest continued on in his homily to say “there is no coincidence in any part of God’s plan”

And as soon as he said this, my dad and I made direct eye contact. I remembered what he told me when I was struggling after my breakup. He wrote those exact words down on a slip of paper for me, and that slip was stuck to the fridge with the same magnets that once held a love letter from the girl who would eventually abuse me to the point where I would lose sight of reality almost entirely, and where the fallout that resulted from the breakup would almost lead me to my own self destruction and my own demise. But unlike that note from my ex, this small slip of paper was filled to the brim with truth: there is no such thing as a coincidence

Before I left for Mass, I stopped by my mailbox since I had something delivered. It was the 10 year anniversary vinyl for Porter Robinson’s album Worlds. I used to listen to Worlds a lot with my mom, and I owned a copy of it on vinyl at one point that I eventually gave to my (now ex) girlfriend. I never asked for that vinyl back, and the 10 year anniversary album came out a few weeks after the breakup, on August 12th. I immediately ordered it when it dropped, because I wanted to replace the version I gave to my ex. It showed up on Christmas Eve and I opened it up when I got home from mass with my family. I carefully opened up the shipping sleeve, took the album, with it’s holographic cover, out, just to immediately see the colors of the lights in my apartment reflecting off the cover and back onto my face. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect

This album, which I used to listen to with my mom, and helped me cope with a lot of stress and sadness when I was growing up, that I had given away to someone who I thought cared about me and loved me, was back in my possession. And not only was it back in my possession, but it was reflective now. It was different. It was like I had given something away, only to have it given back to me, refined and polished and in a better condition than I had given it away in

I see my heart in this moment. I gave it away. I gave it to someone who stomped on it and shattered it into a million pieces, then threw those pieces so far away and allowed them to scatter in the wind that I was afraid I’d never get them back, even in pieces. And tonight, it was returned to me in one piece, polished and refined and in a better condition than I gave it away in

I took the album out of the shipping sleeve and saw the reflections of the light in the artwork. I saw the lights reflecting and refracting and showing all sorts of beautiful colors. But it wasn’t until I picked the album up to take a picture of it, that I saw my own reflection in the cover of this album.

On the cover of an album about escapism, I saw my reflection staring back at me. My face was reflected back at me, alongside the beautiful colors of the rainbow coming from the lights in my apartment. I saw myself in this album. Literally

I know Christmas isn’t about the material objects we have or receive, but that doesn’t mean that the material objects of this world can’t help us to understand and appreciate the infinity beauty of God, who wants nothing more than to ease our suffering, comfort those who fear that they may never feel loved, and care for those who are tossed aside by the big and mighty and powerful people, empowered by the world around them. These people can take away my job, they can rip my sanity away from me right in front of my eyes, they can condemn me to a life of suffering and sadness and fear, but they can’t take away the one thing that allows us to continue forward: joyful celebration that we have the omnipotent and all powerful God of the universe on our side, loving us and caring for us even to the point of becoming one of us so that we may better understand how to become more loving and caring like God

And there is no coincidence in this. None of this was by accident. None of this was a mistake. None of this was a joke. There will be nobody jumping out from behind a multiviewer and blowing a horn in my face and yelling surprise and throwing confetti at me

And even though that’s the case, I’m still here. There is no confetti. There are no horns. But there is the fact that life changes with just a tiny bit of faith and hope

And there is also the reality that I’m very aware of now that the nightmare is over now. All because of two young people with unimaginable faith in something much greater than themselves, that would give way to the possibility of joy to more people than just themselves, and inspire me to find the tiniest slice of hope in a newborn child on Christmas Eve

Back in August, I was having a conversation with my dad about how I wish I could talk to my mom about all the problems I was having in life, most notably the following:
With work
With girls
With motivation

I desperately wanted to talk to my mom about those things, despite the fact that she passed away over 3 years ago

A seemingly innocent thought very quickly became a much bigger problem: not only did I want to go back in the past and talk to my mom about the problems I was having…I wanted to live in the past. I started to dig up old photo albums, listen to music I used to listen to when I was growing up, and watch things that reminded me of a previous version of myself: the version of myself who had childlike innocence in the way he viewed the terrors of the world

I even started working on an art project to help myself express the way I was feeling. I wanted to make something to help express my distaste for the horrible existence we discover is our reality when we grow up and become less innocent

I realized recently without even really consciously thinking about it that I was living in the present again. I realized I wasn’t actively thinking about the colors of the folders I used for my classes in elementary school, the McDonalds that just so happened to be open late one night when I was in high school and severely mentally unwell, or the folding chair I sat on when I would play video games as a kid

I was thinking about coffee. I was specifically thinking about the iced dirty chai I was drinking at the moment. And then I was thinking about moving apartments. And then I was thinking about playing Overwatch with some online friends of mine who I play with on occasion (and who I’ve missed playing with while I’m out of town and hundreds of miles away from my computer)

I was thinking about the present. And I was thinking about the near future.
I wasn’t thinking backwards. I was thinking ahead

I felt comfortable doing that again. I felt welcome living in the present again. I felt optimistic thinking about the future again

And I haven’t stopped living in the moment since

We eventually broke up, and I found myself in a very odd situation: I had free time. I had nobody telling me who I was or what I should do. The first thing I did after the breakup was take a nap. And I’ve been sleeping a lot better recently, and feel less exhausted as a result. I had the free time to get back into editing videos and making music and I bought a new car and I got a tattoo and I finally got a haircut and cut off my gross, tangled, and matted hair that I waited months to cut because I felt obligated to keep it for someone who wasn’t looking out for anyone but themselves. 

And I started diving deeper into directing. I got better at actually directing, not just operating the equipment. I helped configure some of the live boxes in the new graphics package we’re getting soon, and I started spending more time in the control room. Every other Tuesday, I direct the morning show with one of our directors who’s been working the morning show longer than I’ve been alive. And I’ve been learning how to communicate and keep my stress under control as I find new ways to improve my skills and continue to learn how to be a director so I can use Ignite as a tool, not as a crutch. 

I also went back to therapy, since I have some very real trauma from that relationship, plus I have a lot of life changes coming soon (aka I’m getting promoted to a newscast director sometime relatively soon, since one of our morning directors left for a different gig in Arizona on the creative services team at a station where the temps are more reasonable in the winter, and now I get to join a team of insanely talented and intelligent individuals and direct the morning news in the city I grew up in on the most watched tv station in this part of the state, among other various life changes such as moving apartments again and taking a few trips to go experience life and be reminded of who I actually am) and I told my therapist a bit of my story of wanting to study engineering and wanting to program computers, just to realize that my heart wasn’t there. My heart wanted to tell stories and wanted to engage with art and expression and humanity. And now I operate code based automation and get to do just that in ways I never thought possible

My therapist asked me if I have ADHD, because she saw that my brain was not only able to make sense of two very different things (art and engineering), but was able to make those two very different things work in harmony and have been very successful as a result. I told her about my last relationship and I told her about what I did after (including the fact that I bought a vacuum for the first time ever, which is a very mundane object, but it was a special moment to me) and the thing she told me when I was done telling her about all of those things was that my beautiful ADHD brain was able to soften the blow of something that would’ve completely destroyed most other people. And she’s right. It did. No matter what label science may use to describe my brain, it saved me from myself, as opposed to me needing to be saved from my own brain. I genuinely don’t think I would’ve physically survived that situation if it weren’t for my brain. I genuinely would’ve ended my own life if my beautiful ADHD brain hadn’t turned to art and turned to engineering and turned to music and turned to video and turned to writing (maybe Jess was right!) and turned to the people around me who wanted to help me learn Ignite and learn it well and be a director and direct the best newscasts possible. And for that, I’ll forever be thankful. My brain was designed very intentionally and without coincidence

The summer of 2024 is one that I’ll never be fully sure of what happened, but I’ll always remember the fact that my life could’ve changed for the worse or been cut short entirely, but because of my brain’s unrelenting desire to turn the mundane into beauty (and my perseverance to keep going while being aided by my friends, my family, and surrounding myself with art in any and all forms), I’m still here and now I get to be myself and rediscover who that is and go to work at a place I love and do a job like nothing else out there surrounded by my best friends and my loving family and I get to live in the city I’ve called home for most of my life, for as long as I want, all because of a design flaw turned superpower that allowed me to turn the most mundane and even soul crushingly painful moments into the most beautiful and amazing feeling I’ve ever experienced in my life: the undying desire to be joyful and spread joy

For a vast majority of my life, I’ve been very conscious of my own humanity, and the mortality that comes with being human. The thing with Russian Roulette is that it talks about the seemingly random things that occur in life. Russian Roulette, being an activity involving a random occurrence that leads to someone’s death, is a very interesting concept that, in a lot of ways, accurately portrays human life. And the song itself gives very real examples of the seemingly random nature of Porter’s success, whether he wants it or not.

In the case of the song, Porter discusses from the very beginning that he’s very much faking it until he makes it. Or, faking it until he doesn’t have to bother to fake it anymore, which is a thing that’ll occur when he dies. He feels an obligation to fake how he feels, despite not wanting to fake those feelings, or really feel anything at all

I relate to that a lot, and I have throughout my life. My brain, which has been through all sorts of different trauma, whether it was from getting punched in the face in 8th grade, being abandoned by a vast majority of his closest friends as a junior in high school, or the emotional abuse endured in the summer of 2024 from a (now ex) girlfriend, has been forced to fake a smile. It’s been forced to fake emotions to give the appearance of wellbeing. My heart has been forced to feel things it didn’t want to feel.

Pressure started to build, especially when I started college and my brain didn’t understand math as well as I had pretended to. And how I faked this idea that I was fine, until it became too difficult to hide the fact that I was actually very unwell and very unhappy, which caused a spiral into depression unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, worsened by the perceived inability to be honest with myself and with others in the way I talked about my feelings. 

“Go fuck myself? I already did” speaks on this reality that some people are genuinely out to get me, but I’ve already gotten to myself worse than they ever will. And whether that’s perception or reality is irrelevant, especially now that I’ve gone through the events of the last few months.
Maybe my own worst enemy isn’t always myself

And now, as we approach the fall of 2024, and now that I’m out of a genuinely abusive situation, I’m starting to understand the part of the song where Porter talks about the things he wants to do “one more time” in a way I didn’t understand it previously. Those seemingly mundane things are what saved Porter. And the seemingly mundane is what saved me. 

I wanna take a nap one more time

I wanna buy a car one more time

I wanna get a tattoo from Riley one more time

I wanna buy a vacuum one more time

I wanna direct a newscast one more time

I wanna edit a video one more time

I wanna make a song one more time

I wanna take a roadtrip one more time

I wanna go to a concert one more time

And my beautiful ADHD brain wanted to do those things “one more time” so badly that it held on for those things, if not for anything else. And while it may be cliche that I had the thought of “it’ll get better” cross my mind, it’s a beautiful cliche. And it reflects me because I’m beautiful too. My desire to turn the mundane into beauty turned my horrible situation into a very beautiful version of me and kept me alive. Instead of me needing to be saved from my brain, my brain saved me from myself.

And I didn’t kill myself, even though I can be an idiot sometimes

What ended up happening instead was I ended up staying with my tv job. And I kept working on getting better and I found more reasons to love what I was doing and I fell in love with tv production as a result of realizing that there is no coincidence that I ended up back in that industry

I’ve found myself remembering BY NAME a lot of the people who helped me get to this. In no particular order, people like Katelin and Nicole and Amanda and Julianna and Katie and Luke and Ava and Luke and Ed and Teresa and Sean and Jessica and Lexy and John and Damian and Molly and Riley and Jason and Brandi and countless other people who took a chance on me, helped me find the confidence to try something new, or just simply provided a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on or a positive affirmation or a packet of Vegemite (or a nice combination of those things)

I am currently the youngest director on the morning show (and somehow the second tallest). And I can continue to talk about the last year of my life at my real job, which also just so happens to be the real job at the place I started working at in June 2023. The job I dropped out of college for. The job I gave up so much comfort for. The job I became a morning person for. And the job I knew from the first week that I wanted to do for as long as I possibly could.

Seeing a picture of a redhead friend of mine and her hair looks very red

Directing a newscast with the person I’m eventually going to replace sitting next to me

Having a computer with 4 monitors

Buying a new car

Editing videos

Flying a drone and having a Part 107 license

Being surrounded by more screens than I can count

Being able to make decisions to benefit my mental health on my own

An ice cold beer

Rubber ducks around my workplace

Having a full time job and working with people who look out for me

Getting to choose who my friends are

Getting to drive halfway across the state to hang out with my friends

Hugging my friends tight

Getting to set the AC where I want it

Mac n cheese for breakfast

Getting to use my vacation time to go to concerts in different states

Going to 7 concerts in a year

Configuring live boxes that people will see on tv

Getting to eat ice cream whenever I want

Getting to watch my sister get married

Getting to meet my niece

Being open to different kinds of art

Having the ability to go travel and take pictures

Having good camera gear

Normally, one of our morning anchors pisses me off to the extreme and we have an meteorologist who annoys the hell outta me, but both yesterday and today, I noticed myself seeing that anchor differently and we’ve had some really interesting/fun/entertaining conversations the last 2 mornings, and that meteorologist has made me laugh more in the last few days than I’ve laughed for a very long time. I haven’t smiled or laughed at work this much since my director debut back in early April, which was before I met my ex

I think I’m quicker to forgive others for small things now because I realize the fragility of humanity, the imperfections we all have as humans, our tendencies to make mistakes, and the overall difficulty of existence as a whole. It can suck to be alive sometimes, but we’re all experiencing it, so we might as well be grateful for the companionship we have in our suffering as human beings and make the most of what little life we get to live in the grand scheme of things. I need to get better at forgiving myself for things of that same small size

With all of that being said, I got to end my work week today in studio with that anchor and that meteorologist and one of our master control operators (who was one of my trainers when I was a temp in 2022) and I got to sit in the corner I sat in for the first time almost 2 years ago. The corner where my life changed and my perception of reality was shattered into a million pieces and I was exposed to the fragility of life, as well as the reality that I am special and I am successful, just not in the way that society commonly perceives success. I’m not rich, I’m not famous, and the only power I have is to try my best and attempt to make the world a better place. But, despite those perceived shortcomings, I don’t fall short in one way: I’m happier than every single person who’s told me I’m unworthy of experiencing that feeling of happiness, or otherwise made me feel like my life is meaningless and unimportant

Maybe I’m not lying to myself every time I look in the mirror and tell myself to remember that this is what a better life is. Maybe I’m telling myself the truth and being brutally honest when tell myself that and that a better life for me involves waking up at 2am and drinking energy drinks (fewer now than I did when I was a temp, as I revealed to that anchor today) and listening to music on the drive to work while loudly singing along

With that knowledge, I think I’m going to be significantly better at looking out for myself and being aware of how I feel and being honest to myself about that, and not jumping into a relationship or a friendship that I know isn’t going to make my life any better or make my heart any happier

Not everyone is meant to be part of my life, and I need to take that to heart and do something with that knowledge. I’ll keep sitting in different chairs, playing with my fancy control panels and hitting my colorful buttons, all while smiling and laughing and enjoying life no matter who’s there to hear about it or experience it with me. Life is meant to be enjoyed, is it not? I hope the people who are meant to enjoy it with me are willing and able to

I won’t be surprised if I never date ever again.
I won’t be surprised if I never get married.
I won’t be surprised if I live alone for the rest of my life.
But I won’t be surprised if those things being my reality make me just as happy, if not more than I currently am

I have short hair, I’m single, I’m sleep deprived, I have some tattoos and I recently removed my eyebrow piercing because I completely stopped taking care of it, my apartment is a mess, and I’m happy for once.
It’s crazy how much easier it is to be happy when you’re not thinking about all the ways you need to be different to satisfy someone else’s idea of your happiness, as those people will ultimately love themselves more than they will ever love you, and will want you to conform to their idea of what happiness is while they are incredibly unhappy themselves.
It’s also much easier to be happy when you’re not constantly thinking that you need to be somewhere else doing something else to satisfy this idea that you have to be normal and do normal things to be happy. Being normal and doing normal things will only earn you normal amounts of happiness. Being extraordinary and doing extraordinary things will earn you extraordinary amounts of happiness, and in extraordinary ways

I remember the music I listened to
I remember the music on the radio.
I remember the tv shows I briefly caught passing glimpses of as I never really invested in or enjoyed watching tv (and the fact that we had one tv in the whole house and it was in the basement and I didn’t grow up with the morning news on while I was getting ready for school ended up being extremely ironic, considering what I do for work).
I remember we watched Remember The Titans and King Fu Panda as a family on occasion (and that one time we even once watched Kung Fu Panda on the ceiling with a cheap projector I got from Amazon).
I remember playing lots of Minecraft on my mom’s laptop, sitting in a folding chair.
I remember the friends I had, the hangouts we’d have, the girls I had crushes on, and the people I looked up to and admired as people

Remembering all of this is odd. My life has changed a ton. I have a green folder sitting on the floor of the bedroom of my apartment with a list of music selections by number, a packet with the layout of the banks on the Ignite Katalyst board, and the agenda from the department meeting when it was announced to my department that I was going to learn to direct a newscast.

I can walk on that leg again, but the nerves never fully healed.
The only thing getting punched is the play button on Ignite.
I listen to more melodic music now.
I dropped out of college.
I’m reminded frequently that a lot of my childhood friends have moved to different places, done different things with their lives, or have decided that I’m not worth keeping up with

I made a playlist to commemorate the feeling that I’ll never listen to my favorite songs for the first time ever again.
I can’t ask my mom about girls and talk to her about my girl trouble anymore.
I don’t hang out with my friends very often.
I decided fairly recently that I’m not sure if I’ll date ever again (although I could definitely be convinced by one specific girl who I worked with at a grocery store when I was still in college).
And some of my idols turned out to be bad people.
My favorite movie is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
I watched a few episodes of Survivor for the first time back in June of 2024, after finding out it’s a CBS show a few months before that.
I built a computer for gaming that I hardly use because I’m so tired after a day at work.
The folding chair I used to sit on is sitting in the corner of my bedroom and I used it as a step stool to help me hang something up in my apartment recently

I still don’t watch the news. My green folder doesn’t have handouts on fossils in it anymore. And I’ll never be a kid ever again