Confession

In a little over a year, I will be taking [insert state here] bar exam. Which, is really just going to be... so awful. Like there is literally nothing pleasant about this time next year, and roughly the two months preceding it.

Which means that in a little more than a little over a year, I will, in theory anyway, have a real live legal job lined up, and will become a practicing attorney.

I find this fact pants-crappingly terrifying.

This is my confession. Incidentally, I just got off of Skype with an old high school friend of mine who is now in Mississippi of all places, and a large chunk of our conversation was a kind of collective disbelief that we are, in fact, adults. There are legitimate kids now, younger than us, and we are not them. We are old and, in my case, in a year will be fully independent, theoretically competent adults. Or at least we will expected to be. This is expected of me, who has only ever known childhood, adolescence, and youth.

I don't think I am dumb, and I know that I can probably handle it. It's more of a shock that it is actually happening. Growing up, that thing we call "adulthood" seemed so far off into the future, this kind of shadow thing that, even though you heard about it, and knew that conceptually, in the abstract, one day you would reach it, you never *actually* thought it was going to happen to you.

And then it does. Even in my "young adult" days, which was college until about now, I could put on the aires of responsibility, and had more freedom, but in the end, I could always play the "student" card. I was (and am, for a few more months, anyway) relatively insulated. You don't think about the time passing, at least I don't. And it passes quickly. And it happens so fast, it creeps up on you, you don't see it coming, so when it finally does happen, you wonder if you are really ready for it. You want "another five minutes" to get ready. But it has already happened, and the question is whether you can handle it.

Adults always seemed so... old, and together, and I always thought by the time I was an adult, I would have it all together, that the pieces would all be in place, and that I would know what to do. My parents, and any adults I knew, always seemed like that to me when I was a kid. And now I am starting to realize they were probably winging it as much as I am. And as anyone does. That realization, I think, is the real source of fear or dread or whatever. The knowledge that at some level, we are all throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. But we are still to make something of that shit-flinging, and "not fuck up."

In the end, most people figure it out. I will too, I am sure. It's just so... sudden. To quote The Grateful Dead (or Jimmy Buffett, depending on what recording you are listening to), "woh oh/what I want to know/where does the time go?"

Life

Me

And because I referenced it in the blog, and it is relevant, and I like the song:

Uncle John's Band by The Grateful Dead. Alpine Valley Concert 1989

Forever Young

Also known as "the depressing part of YouTube." I spend a lot of free time on YouTube, and eventually stumble onto things that are poignant. As probably everyone with an internet connection knows, the other day Glee actor Cory Monteith was found dead in a hotel room in Vancouver, Canada. As of yet, no cause of death has been released. I am not a "Gleek," nor do I watch the show, really. But at 31, it is always sad when a promising young person suddenly passes away.

It reminded me of a bunch of videos I had found the other night on YouTube, tributes to stars over the last 100 or so years who died young -- often before reaching their 30th or 40th birthdays. The tragic part about it, is the "what ifs" and the unfulfilled potential. People who at a very young age had accomplished a lot, had burst on the scene in a flash of blinding light. What else would they have been capable of?

And yet, when I watch these videos, and read about these people, sometimes I wonder. I wonder, is it better to have your youthful star burn brightly into the night, even if that star of passion must quickly flame out? Or it is better to live a measured life, slowly waiting for time and age to find you, while you go about doing whatever it is you do? The people in these videos, in many ways lived more than most who make it to two, three, four times their age. And they are forever remembered as their star was burning, not after it had long burned out. If nothing else, they had interesting lives, which is more than most can say. The real trick is, have the interesting life longer, keep the star burning long after day has broken. But very few people, it seems, in that way, get to have their cake and eat it too. But perhaps this is all romanticism. No matter how long you live, what matters is the life in the years, not the years in the life. How we all forget.

Incidentally, these lists are why I will never do drugs. Also, "the 27 club" is as tragic as it is unsettling. So many iconic figures (particularly from the Boomer generation) died at 27.

In case you are in need of quiet reflection:

A tribute to young musicians lost

It's sad to realize that the silent era is all but a fading memory now

The "27 club"

Forever young

To close, I leave some thoughts from smarter people than myself on the subject:

"They that love beyond the world can never be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies." ~William Penn.

"Oh how wrong we were to think that immortality meant never dying." ~Gerard Way.

"The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live." ~Joan Borysenko.