While emptying out an old wooden chest, I found memories from the last decade – birthday cards, embarrassing photographs, journals filled with optimist ignorance, letters from siblings, paintings, drawings, mini-novels I’d written and other artifacts from a time when my youthful creativity was at its peak.
A smile or chuckle here and there and I’d toss them into a cardboard box.
Until I found a couple items from 1998…
The first that struck me was a literary review of a novel I’ve sent to a publisher in the UK. 10 years ago. They’d liked it and were eager to publish. I was twenty. Totally freaked out and never sent in the contract.
The next item was a set of 3 letters – all from Oxford University asking if I was still planning on taking my spot in their masters program in Computer Science. I never replied, foregoing that spot.
We all wonder what our paths in life could have been had we made certain decisions at those crucial crossroads.
Sometimes I wonder, what would have happened:
- Maybe a published novel with no readership, or a published novel endorsed by Oprah’s book club.
- Maybe unemployment even after Oxford, or owning a billion dollar software company.
I’ll never know.
But what I do know is that 10 years ago, I chose a path that led to a small town in Ohio.
Comments (2)
dayton, OH in the hizz-house !!! lol…never look back my dear…look at all you’ve accomplished thus far…we’re all proud of you !!!
ps: ahem…for a quick second i was scared you were gonna insert an excerpt from one of those sibling letters…not that i would care or anything ;op
I definitely wonder the same way. It’s strange to look back at your life and see how small decisions (or non-decisions) affected the direction of your life. I went to school with every intention to be an engineer…I wanted to work for NASA. I changed my mind basically because I couldn’t understand a word out of my physics professor’s mouth. I can’t help but wonder what my life would be like if I had stayed on that path. I have to say that I still think going up in space would be the ultimate in travel. Yet I can’t picture myself an engineer.