I imagine life as a singled traveled path that could lead to anywhere. There are so many ways to go, so many turns. You could live forever and never take the same road twice. Taking a hard look back, you have to wonder where else it may have taken you. All you know for sure though is where you are.
I can’t honestly say I’ve lived life with a great sense of scope, not beyond a few years anyway. If you laid out the map of all the decisions I’ve made and traced each step to where I stand, the footprints would seem to wonder erratically across the page.
It’s easy enough for one to wonder why they hadn’t taken a more direct path or focused on a specific destination. But that’s not how it works, really.
Life has always just seemed more like the management of a series of predictable and unpredictable challenges. Making choices with a blueprint in mind is a good idea, but we still have to paint it one stroke at a time.
It was one of these fortunate strokes of life that brought me to apply for a job at The Evening Sun in August of 2006.
Come the end of May, my time here at the newspaper will be over. After five years, I’ve decided to give notice and move to Albany. There are a lot of reasons, really, but mostly I’m going to see about a girl.
I’m not sure how many people know this about me, but in the first semester of 2004 at SUNY Oneonta, after two an a half years of political science, I was forced to wash out of school without my degree. My decision to leave was more about fiscal realities than it was about academics, but I’d be lying if I said I was a stellar student. Though my grades were satisfactory enough, the pending college loans demanded ongoing payment while I attended school. Being a young guy juggling about thirty real life responsibilities I’ve never had before and fighting the constant urge to over indulge in my expensive adolescence, I decided I should step back. I imagine the footprints on the map of my life chaotically jerking into an unknown direction.
About this period of time my life hit “rock bottom,” as they say, though I’d rather compare it to a stone skipping over the surface of the water. There are low points, but we’re still above the water. After college I fell off the grid for a short time, lived with friends, even out of my car. I got injured and my uninsured medical debts and college loans combined into a fearsome credit monster. I’ve always lacked a support structure and had to find my own way.
