When I was half my age...

[jim_p]

While going through stuff and packing I came across a diary I had started back when I was a senior at MIT... I was almost exactly half the age I am now. It was a terribly angstful time in my life; I'm not normally moved to write my thoughts down unless I find them very troubling. Reading it now, I feel rather sad for the poor, confused young man I was back then. I was depressed, lonely, paranoid, and totally misinformed as to how how people really worked (I had absorbed the lessons my parents had taught me, which it turned out served more to keep me convenient than to teach me useful people skills).

I had mixed feelings... on the one hand, I'm glad to have some confirmation that I've come a ways since then. On the other hand, part of me would like to go back and give that poor young man a bouquet of clues. Maybe fewer years of my life would have been wasted in confusion and depression if someone had come by at some point with the clues I really needed, instead of the well-meaning platitudes I kept getting...