Newsletter: July 1, 2004
If you came up to me ten years ago and asked me where I thought I would be and what I thought I would be doing when
I got older, I honestly wouldn't have had a good idea. I probably would have told you a good story, but the truth
was that I didn't have a very good plan. I had a feeling that I was going to do great things and that was pretty much
what I was going to shoot for. At the time though, I remember what it was like to be in the moment, but having a lot
of optimism in the future. I had spent most of my life working on the future because that was pretty much my job as
a kid going to school. In that environment, you spent most of your time looking forward to the milestones. Most of
those revolved around becoming a teenager, graduating from grade school, turning 16, going to high school and all the
other big moments you have when you're a kid. It's a strange thing to look back on those times and really think about
what it means to be an adult.
One of the final moments that pretty much cements your transition into the adult world is when you graduate from college
and go out and get a career going. That was about ten years ago for me and no matter how much time goes by, I still
catch myself thinking about the times in the past when being an adult was some mysterious thing that I had not really
figured out yet. My sister saved some of my newsletters from back then and I was talking about graduating from college
and about my times in Hawaii with Steve Rebozzi. Sure, it really wasn't news, but those were the moments of my life
that really seemed to matter at the time. The thing I didn't realize back then was that ten years later, these moments
would still be the ones that are most important to me.
It's not that I don't have moments or times that I value now, but the frame of being an adult is so much more different
than what things felt like when I was younger. Back then, I was more likely to follow a vision and be filled with an
optimism that could not be defeated. It had a lot to do with having less responsibility, but I know that it goes way
beyond that in my world. People in the past have given me a bit of a hard time about some of the crazy things that I've
done, but I knew that eventually I would end up in just about the same place as everyone else. I even wrote that after
my adventures were done that I would be sitting in the same office as lots of people and our only difference would be
in the experiences that I chose to have before I became a serious adult.
I still have my visions, but they need to be tempered a bit because I do have lots of those adult responsibilities that
are kind of important such as bills and mortgages. The main difference between what I am now and what I used to be is
a loss of that optimistic feeling that was so powerful as a kid. Sure, the adult thing has all sorts of freedoms, but
it's hard to look back and not miss the strong feelings that come from an unlimited future with the ability to chase
down any dream that you can come up with. I have to consider myself lucky in the fact that I managed to have the time,
the money and the imagination to do the things that I did when I was younger. All these years later, when times are
tough, I can look back and those memories actually strengthen me and remind me what is possible if you allow it to be.
I know that everyone has their own memories that they value, but to me the thing that I have been realizing is that
the optimism that was seemingly lost is still there. It's just harder to find behind the influences of being an adult.
Even within the confines of having a more responsible life than I did when I was 23, I still want to be able to look
back ten years from now and see that I continued my personal tradition of living a life worth remembering. It has been
a while since I have thought along these lines, but maybe right now is a good time to get that optimism going again.
Make a mental note: July 2004 is where the story continues! Optimism on!
~SM~
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