730 days. 17,520 hours. Over a million minutes. 63 million seconds. However which way I look at it 2 years either seems like a long time or a really long time. 2 years ago today I got boarded a plane bound for Paris. If I had known before that day what adventures and memories that first voyage were to bring, well, I would have left even earlier.
Like I've mentioned before, I'm a sucker for nostalgia. While my chronological memory is typically nothing short of abysmal I'm unusually good with dates. The strangest (and, often, most useless) "this day in history" often sticks to my brain easier than any information I might have an actual use for (phone numbers, locker combinations, ect - i'm terrible). Anyway, all day today I've been thinking back to 63,000,000-something seconds ago.
I don't know if I would have ever taken that flight if three months ealier in early December of 2003 I didn't open my mailbox. It was raining and I was in a hurry to get my mail and back to work. The lid popped open in a hurry and out fell my mail. Scrambling (and cursing) I scooped up the drowning envelopes until something caught my eye and stopped me in a rush. On the outside of one of my bills or credit card offers (or whatever it was - this part is foggy) was something along the lines of "Respond before Dec 15, 2003). Dec 15... why did this date stick out in my head? And then it hit me - I graduated college on that date in 2001.
Could that be? Had two whole years really already ticked by since I had walked across the stage? What the hell happened? Those two years were the most depressing years of my life. Up until December 15, 2001 I had been on a track. I had a gameplan. Through grade school and high school I went without any thought. Even college wasn't so much of an active choice but rather "the thing to do" after high school. I went into it (and out of it, really) without ever really thinking through what I was doing. But then the track ended. I graduated from college three months after the 9/11 tragedy. The job market was completely tanked. Someone with my degree of Communication Studies did one thing - sales.
Sales sucked. Every day I put on a suit, tie and plastic smile as I went door-to-door to businesses selling them things I told them they needed. It was relatively easy but decidedly souless. I've never had any idea what my "dream job" would be (i've always listed "rockstar" when asked) but I added one more item to the list of careers I never wanted to do again.
Seeing that date on the envelope changed everything. I kept asking myself how two years had so effortlessly drifted by? My life was depressing. I had a job that I hated and was bored with but it had been months since I had even breezed through Monster.com for a new one. I had no idea how numb and complacent I had become with my souless status in life. I was stuck and didn't know it.
For the first time in my life I could see how time can really fly by. If two years could pass so quickly without me noticing what about the next two? And then 5, 10, 20...until the day I got a gold watch and "happy retirement" written across a cake. Standing in the rain that day I was freaked out in a big way. I need a big change.
Three months later I was on a plane. I had packed a small backpack of things I thought I might need over the course of a few months and thrown the rest of my stuff into storage. My "plan" was to tramp around Europe for 6 or 7 months, "find myself", and get back with the program. Obviously I had failed to imagine that two years later I'd be hopping around the world taking pictures of an inflatable red couch.
--- to be continued ---
unrelated yet interesting side-note: while Googling for an image of a #2 birthday candle I found this strange cake
Posted March 24, 2006 07:25 PM @ (GMT - 6)
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