Life Experiences, Lessons from a Cigar Smoker

Well I mean to write something last evening about this, but I didn't get around to it until now. I'm listening to Enya right now, which I've never done before, and its making me feel contemplative... all this coming from an one-time metal-head. Not sure if I should've disclosed that. Such is life.

And life is appearantly such that I don't know quite what I thought I knew. I guess this is the point when a post-adolescent begins to realize he doesn't know everything, though I'm not quite sure I ever held that opinion of myself. In retrospect, if I had held such an opinion, it makes me appear quite the jack-ass and only reinforces my newly-realized ignorance of life.

I hang out with people older than myself--considerably older--because I enjoy their company far better than my own peer group. Of course, I still have my peer group that I hang out with on a regular basis to catch up on things, chat, waste time, and enjoy each others' company; but there's just something inherently charismatic which I was previously unaware of in older people. After last evening at TofR, I realized that the charismatic appeal came from their life experience, which only naturally appealed to me because of my acadmic nature and love of knowledge.

Among other things, I've learned that it all comes down to number one. Whether its credit, debt, burden, strife, responsibilty, or wealth--I make it so. That's self-empowering in a sense but quite humbling in another. In fact, quite so humbling as to be my non-stop contemplative thought since about 11:30PM last eveing (it's now 12:30PM Friday). I can't put it any other way... I simply am still a novice when it comes to life. This only further affirms my complaint in my last entry. College is sheltering me, and I was looking forward to "hiding away" from reality another 2 years in grad school as a friend would put it.

I enjoy the pursuit of knowledge, but I MUST start living at some point. Academia is for the young and the retired, and for the select few that are TRULY teachers at heart. The earning potential I have being a 19 year old junior in economics is kind of staggering. I shudder to think how much money I could have made in the last few years, building up a nice 401k, some IRAs, or at least some social security "tenure." Of course I also recognize that the same is highly unlikely without being in school. We arrive at an interesting paradox where I realize now that I could have earned more out of school, but yet would have never been able to come to that realization without having been here and having the limited experience thus gained.

Enough pipes and cigars for me last night, don't need any more today. I don't know how much more contemplation I can take.

By the way, does anyone know of a way to take the arrogant tone out of my writings? I was just reading over some older posts in my other blogs... damn, how naive.