Where Do You Think You Will Be In Five Years?

As you may or may not know my birthday is comin up this Sunday. I'm gonna be 25, a quarter of a century spent on this earth. As I drove to school today where I am currently typing this a comedian named Mitch Hedberg popped into my head. One of his bits was about a job interview, and the interviewer asked him "What do you see yourself doing 5 years from now?" He responds with "Celebrating the 5 year anniversary, of you asking me this question."

Thinking about this I realized that just a few months ago (Oct 6th to be exact) it would have been my 5 year anniversary at IKEA had I stuck around for another 10 months. I remember my interview there and they asked me that exact question. I believe my answer was that I would be in 1 of 2 possible scenarios: 1) some sort of management level within the company had I not yet attained my degree or 2) teaching, coaching, being a family man. Call it a quarter life crisis I guess, but its dawned on me that I haven't really done much with myself since that question was asked of me. Granted I didn't get dealt the best hand in life since I graduated high school with high aspirations of things to come. Having a kid at 19, having the mother die when he's barely 3 and being forced into the single father statistic, being forced to move back in with my parents after 5 years of being on my own. All of these things have severely stunted my personal and professional growth. Don't get me wrong, I love my son and wouldn't trade him for anything in the world, but there are times in my life when I can't help but think about how my life would be had he never come along. From speaking with friends that are in semi-similair situations I've found this isn't that uncommon, which i guess is a good thing for me cause it shows I'm not as messed up as I sometimes think I am.

When I look back at my answer to the question I'm happy that the first scenario didn't unfold that way, cause after being at the company for 4+ years I've seen several of my one time coworkers get promoted to the managerial plateu and almost every one of them has changed for the worst, fitting the mold that is the IKEA manager. I wouldn't want to be like those people, from my experience the large majority of them are not decent human beings. I believe the only reason I really said that at the time was to look like I was going to be there for awhile and they should let me collect their carts for them, wherein reality I figured I would be done with school by then. 6 years and 6 schools later I'm almost there.

I guess the point of this rant is I haven't accomplished nearly as much by the age of 25 as I thought I would have coming out of high school. An ideal world would have had me graduate college 3 years ago, been teaching for 2 and in some sort of a progressing relationship. As we can all plainly see this ideal has not come close to being a reality. When I whine about this to people they tell me to buck up, I'm doing well for what I've had to go through. On one level I understand that, but on another level I know I'm better than that and that I should have been able to rise above the adversity that's been thrust my way to attain my goals. The fact that I haven't done that worries me, maybe I'm not as strong and determined as I once thought I was.

I am, however, a firm believer in everything happens for a reason. What I've missed out on in terms of my youth, career, and love life I've gained in "valuable" life experience. They say whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, so I guess the fact that I'm putting everything else on the back burner to concentrate on finishing school as quickly as possible is a result of everything thats happened. I don't want to live in my parents living room anymore. I want to have my own place again. I want to have a stable career, a happy home. Once I prove to myself that I can make it and provide for myself and my son I believe that everything else should fall into place. So hopefully instead of having a quarter life crisis I'm having a quarter life awakening. This has all been building on something, and I'm eager to see what it is.


On a lighter note, I'm celebrating the big 2-5 by going to Vegas! so woo hoo to me, I'm gonna try to have a blast. I think I will.

My Weekend With The Asians..




These are my asian friends Patty and Jason (except for that little person in the middle, I don't know who she is).

They design and make all the shirts at www.fatrabbitfarm.com. I help them sell their shirts at expos and conventions and what not. This weekend we were in Sacramento at the SacAnime convention sellin tshirts. It was a good time. We got to experience our first road trip, and take a visit to Northern California to see how they would react to the product. If you haven't been to an anime expo before, don't. unless you like anime, in that case i guess it might be your thing. Myself not being a fan I find it funny but annoying at the same time with all these kids running around in their costumes buying up swords and yugi-oh cards. Its REALLY annoying to listen to the kids rattle on about the different cartoons about who is better than who. At the same time I can't help but realize if I were at a ComiCon I would probably be one of those people. But from my experience the comic book fans are far more tamed than their japanese counterparts. I did however, walk out with one of these guys.



The best part about him is that he was free, cause I stole him. I figure if you can charge $1.00 for a 25 cent can of sams club soda, then I'm entitled to take a goomba.

Over all though I was not to impressed with our state capital. You can't turn left anywhere, there are dividers down the center of every god damned road, and the street setups don't make any sense at all. Whoever designed this city must have been high, cause streets stop and become something else then 2 miles later become the other street again even though it doesn't twist or turn or anything. Perfectly good intersections are left clear cause you can't turn left so you have to drive 4 miles out of the way to drive around a friggin corner. Grrrr. One thing they do have on us So Calers though, is this:




Its an IPOD vending machine. Thats right, a vending machine that sells IPods. I was astounded at this feat of technology. I was disapointed that it didn't dispense quite the same way as your average candy dispensing vending station, it hindered me from reaching up and pillaging the bottom row. Still though, I was pleasantly surprised at this particular device.

Something else Sacramento has is this guy.


I call him Metalsauras Rex. It was a dinosaur made out of what looks to be scrap metal, placed out in front of a gas station. It was interesting. They also have real life cigar holding indian statues, as shown below.

I thought these had disappeared since the early 2oth century, but no, they've still got him goin strong. He was in front of the same gas station as Rexy up there, and also a statue of a buffalo that I was unable to snap a picture of. But he wasn't as cool as these other 2 so it makes it ok. Good to see weird ass shit still has a place in todays gas stations.

When I got home I met this guy, his name is Nero.

He's a Boston terrier. He's ugly with a lazy eye, but the fam seems to like him, so I guess thats what matters.

In some other news, I saw The Prestige this past week. A few months back I wrote a post about how I thought I was going to see the prestige but I actually ended up seeing the Illusionist. The Prestige kicks the shit out of the Illusionist, much as you would expect if Wolverine and Batman were to team up against Fight Club and 7th Heaven. And when you have Wolverine and Batman duking it out in an epic magical battle, it makes it that much better. I don't want to reveal to much of the story cause its really REALLY good the way it all plays out and I highly recommend it. I saw it at the dollar theater but I believe it should be coming out on DVD pretty soon, so that should be a must buy on whatever Tuesday it comes out.

Also my cheesy new years resolution is to lose weight and get in shape. My starting weight was 195 with a final goal weight of 160, so I've got a ways to go. So far 2 weeks in I've lost 10 lbs, so hoorah for me. The biggest thing is I'm trying to lose the weight without really doing much physical activity, just changing my eating habits. So far, so good. Ideally it would all be lost by the time I go to Vegas in 2 weeks, but I don't see that happening, but I am off to a good start, so hopefully all will go well.

Alright, its late and I need to wake up early for school. Hopefully I'll be able to write more frequently, but I guess that all depends on how much interesting information I have to write about. Ok kids, have a good one.

Well here it is, 2007. So cliche'd, I know, but where the hell did the time go? I always thought my parents were just bein dumb old people when I was a kid and they would say "well it seems like yesterday you were just this big" and then they would put their hand about 2 feet from the ground. But damn, I'm gonna be 25 in a mere 24 days and I don't know what the hell has happened to all the time. It seemed like high school took forever to get through, and now I've already been out for 7 years. Jesus. Oh well.

I started classes again this Tuesday. They seem to be alright, the only one that may be a pain in the ass is my social psych class, cause the final is writing this 20 page grant proposal, which I guess would be useful if I were actually a psychology major. But I'm not. Its a class to fill a stupid theme requirement. The class itself seems interesting though, so we'll see how it turns out. One class that I looks like it will be useful is this computer class I'm taking, it teaches you how to use a bunch of graphic design programs. Prior to this I didn't have any interest in graphic design, but I've been playin around with the programs and it is kind of fun. We'll see what happens though. The only downside is that is an intersession class so its only 5 weeks long, which means i'm there everyday for 4 hours plus a bunch of lab time, so needless to say all these breaks I thought I had in my schedule are being occupied by sitting in a computer lab for 3 hours a day on top of my regular class schedule. Such is the life of someone trying to squeeze his final 2 years of education into 1.

I watched Borat the other day, by far one of the funnier movies I've seen this year. The year is only 5 days old, but still its pretty funny. What I found even funnier though was after the lights were turned on I hear someone behind me muttering to themselves "oh that was horrible...just horrible. i hated that. that was a horrible movie." I turn to see who is so disgusted with this film I had just spent the last hour and a half laughing my ass off at to see an older couple, I'd say in their late 70's, early 80's. As one helped the other into her wheel chair, I couldn't help but laugh at the fact that these people came to the film. Had they not seen any previews for it? Any of the press about the film? It seemed that they walked up to the marqui and eeny meenie miney moed the movie they wanted to watch, and Borat was what they ended up with. What boggles me even more is if it was so offensive to them, why'd they stick around til the end? You would think a 300 lbs man tea bagging another man would have driven them out, but no, not them. They stuck through it til the end. Hats off to them, I know my parents would have walked out long before the tea-bagging incident, and they are only in their 50's/60's. Oh well, maybe its cause we saw it at a dollar theater, they didn't wanna make a stink about getting their dollar back.

Well since I have to wake up at 7, I guess I should hit the perverbial hay. I get to spend another glorious weekend in Solvang visiting my dad's family. Hoorah. At least I get Danish pancakes. yummy. :)