Twenty by the Age of Five

mirror and i we’ve got a good connection
i lie to him and he lies to me
but tonight i see the wrong reflection
staring right back, staring back at me
i was seven by the age of two
i was twenty by the age of five
in such a hurry just to get there
that you leave yourself behind
~Rockwell Church

So I must admit that I haven’t really updated this site in a while. Until recently I hadn’t been dancing all that much. And my guitar-playing: well, we won’t go there… It’s hard to find time for everything. But all this ‘leaving behind’ comes at a cost.

For awhile, I’ve had a mental picture of who I want to be, and I’ve been heading toward that. I work all the time. I talk to Kim every day. I always eat breakfast. And I get in reading-time whenever I can.

Cause that’s who I want to be: passionate about my company, healthy, educated, and in a strong relationship. But that doesn’t really tell the whole Jared story.

In part, it’s not all that off. Whenever I get passionate about something, I dedicate a lot of time to it. My freshman year of college it was dance. Last year it was my thesis. Right now it’s my job. But before now I always had all sorts of other obligations that interrupted my busy-ness and got me into other things.

“You act more like a thirty-five year old than a twenty-<> year old.”

Kim said that to me the other day. And perhaps it’s not far from the truth: right now I spend more time at networking events than I do at dances.

Last year that wasn’t the case. Even though I was dating Kim and working on my thesis I was dancing all the time and being, well, more of a kid. And I don’t want to grow up yet.

My mental picture of late has me in a suit, making a name for myself, and planning for the future. But that’s really not what I should want and certainly not what I need yet–it won’t really make me happy.

I’m not going to say that I don’t love my work. I enjoy nothing more than being able to realize a vision, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world. But it doesn’t have to be one or the other.

I feel like I’m having trouble verbalizing it here, whereas a year ago I wrote an entry about how much I loved just “being happy” and sharing that with others. So I guess I’m not on quite the same page. I’ve grown a little too serious. But I want to regress a little, be a kid, be myself.

Thanks, hon, for bringing this up. I don’t want to leave myself behind. I’m off to go dancing now…