thinking

now i KNOW i'm getting old, i'm sitting around thinking about the ins and outs of my life. i guess it's part of getting close to reaching the milestone of nice round number like 30. this is the part of my blog that i use as therapy. i'm writing this mostly just to put it down and see it. like a diary. so if you want to read be my guest but you'll probably finish and say "what a fucking wierdo jimmy is."

i've been thinking about where my life has taken me. i thought about where i was when i turned 25, 20,15, 10, and 5.

25 - back in march of 2001 i was living in the DC area. i lived in Lanham in a 3 bedroom apartment with Kristin, Roger, Chris and Bridget. I think Roger was still dating Mary so the apartment was a hotbed of sexy 20 year olds. i was still in the air force. work was ok i guess. i complained all the time but you know, it just wouldn't be jimmy if i weren't complaining about SOMEthing right? i'm trying to think if there was anything i'd tell that jimmy, something that could've made his life better. nothing. i used to think i could tell the old me to hold onto Kristin. do nice things for her, tell her i love her more often..... but what's the point? if there's one thing i've discovered about myself it's that i'm not "built" for a relationship. just like midgets ain't build to be in the NBA, i'm not emotionally built to be in a relationship. sooner or later, i screw it up. so given what i know i can't recommend anything to jimmy at 25.

20 - ah yes, at 20..... march of 1996 found me right back here in san antonio. i was living with my family and working at QVC as a phone operator. i particularly remember THIS birthday because i was nailing this married chick i worked with at the time. this was a point in my life where i started realizing that marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be. given the opportunity we're pretty much all only as faithful as our options. call me a cynic but if you sleep with a few married women it's hard to convince me it's just us guys that are dogs. i suppose a man ruled more by ego than common sense would think "maybe you're just THAT studly dude!!!! maybe most chicks are faithful but those ones you bagged couldn't resist you!!!!" yeah right. i ain't that big a prize. i never was. so what would i tell jimmy at 20? well since i was 2 months from enlisting i would tell jimmy to do something that could have made my life a HELL if a lot easier. i would have told him to bail on going into Finance and gone into computers instead. i could've gotten into computers in the air force, stayed in 4 years, learned a lot, gone to school on uncle sam's dime, and then bailed after 4 years and gotten PAID working as a contractor. not just working as a contractor, but i'd have looked up brown and root and gone to work for them over in Kosovo or Bosnia. i heard so many damn stories from my afghanistan coworkers about how great it was over there. top shelf honeys, great living conditions, and top pay. oh how i wish i could talk to jimmy at 20.

15 - i don't really remember much about this time in my life. i was a sophomore in high school in arizona. that's it. i didn't do anything. i went to class, read books, and sat around. i never even had a girlfriend at this point. good god at this point i still actually believed in love. i believed in so much back then. i believed i would go to the air force academy. i believed i'd become a pilot. i believed i'd marry some gal, have a family, and bring that family up in the air force like i was brought up. it was the only way of life i ever knew and i liked it. shit, what WOULDN'T i tell jimmy at 15. for starters i'd tell him to get off his ass and play some sports. i'd tell him to punish his body and take advantage of the youth i had. turn your body into a machine. jimmy at 15 knew that chicks didn't seem to flock to skinny nerds but jimmy at 30 can tell him they go for fat emotional trainwrecks even less.

10 - i can't remember if we were living in new mexico or if we had moved overseas to turkey yet. god life was so easy back then. by this time i had gone thru enough school to realize i was smarter than everyone else around me. a lot smarter. i'm not saying this to be a fatheaded dick i'm just telling the truth. that's how it has always been. you know what i'd tell jimmy at 10? jeans and a t-shirt. looking back at old pictures i used to dress like such a goober. jeans and tshirts are so much easier and comfortable.

5 - this is all pretty hazy. i lived in Maine. life was all about playing with friends. one thing i do remember about that time period was that this was the time when it was actually fun to be in the air force. i remember going to my dad's work (he was a firefighter at the time) and hanging out at his squadron get-togethers. softballs games, vollyball and basketball, cookouts..... everyone enjoyed themselves and it was just a better atmosphere than the one i was in when i was enlisted. ah the good old days.

so what does the future hold? what will jimmy at 35 or 40 tell this jimmy? well if there's one thing i've learned it's that i have no fucking clue. jimmy at 25, 20, 15, 10, and 5 would never have guessed how jimmy at 30 is living in a million years. so here's to the future and all the uncertainty it brings.