Entry #3

I miss feeling excited about things. The older you get, the more it seems like everything loses that "something special" that made you look forward to it whenever it happened. Like Christmas. When you're young, you count down the days until Christmas with that overpowering curiosity of what St. Nick will give you this year. But as a 28 year old single man with no kids, I just realized today that Christmas is already next week. I do love Christmas; the food, the gatherings. It truly is a wonderful day and I have no doubt that I will enjoy every second of it alongside my friends and family. But that feeling of excitement I used to get shortly after my October birthday knowing that Christmas was a mere two months away has been absent for years.

When you're a kid, you get excited about the simplest things. I remember being so excited to go to a Chinese food restaurant because that meant I got read my Chinese animal zodiac on the place mat. Or going to visit my great-grandmother at the end of the street because she always had a bowl of those strawberry flavored hard candies in the back room of her house. Even in high school, I'd get excited to go to a certain class because maybe the hot girl, who I had a crush on, would say "hi" to me again like she did last Tuesday.

I recently ended a relationship with someone who essentially told me I lack ambition. I took it to heart--as I do most things that are even remotely critical of my way of life--and tried my best to defend myself. But since then I've been asking myself what I want to do with my life almost daily and I still can't answer it.

I'm not a parent. And, in all honesty, I may never become one. However, I am surrounded by parents so I've seen my fair share of parenting styles. The one common trend I see within most of these styles is that every parent tells their kids they can be anything they want to be when they grow up. It is a parents' job to insure their children that their future is bright and free of sadness or harm. If I had kids, I would do the same thing; give them hope. Because every child deserves to believe that they can accomplish whatever they want and be excited about the future that's in front of them. My parents told me I could be anything and I believed them. And I was so excited for my future. I was going to be a professional wrestler, or a comedian, or the drummer of a rock band. I miss that feeling. That feeling of knowing that your future is ahead of you and it's a bright one.

I believe that most people at one point in their lives have to give up on some dreams. I mean, let's face it; some kids want to grow up to be Batman and I've yet to see a single person strolling down the streets with a rubber suit and a utility belt. I do worry that I gave up on my dreams too early and now it's too late to do what makes me happy. And, I don't even know what it is that would make me happy anymore.

I get made fun of quite a bit for acting like an old man, but the truth is I feel like I don't have all that much time left to figure out what I want. And, I worry that by the time I do figure out what I want, it'll be too late.

What do I want to be when I grow up? I don't know.

-Ryan
www.drinknthinkn.com

Entry #2

I used to skip classes quite a bit when I was in the eighth grade. It was common knowledge amongst the teachers that I had some stomach issues. So on several different occasions, I would simply tell the teacher I didn't feel good and I'd get to go to the nurse's office. The nurse had a little couch to lay on and I would just stay there until I felt like going back. I never really was that sick. I just didn't want to go to class. I think the nurse eventually picked up on it because she started calling my mom every time I would come in. And, when my mom got involved, I needed to come up with a new plan.

Eventually I came up with the brilliant idea that I would just skip my class without talking to the teacher first and just tell them if I saw them later that day that I was in the nurse's office with a tummy ache. This way, I could still use my "illness" to get out of class and I wouldn't have to worry about the nurse calling my mom. The only thing I needed to figure out was where to hide. I couldn't just roam the halls and hope no one noticed me or be the only kid out on the playground while all the other kids were learning about the different biological classifications(which, by the way, I still know to this day--kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. SUCK IT!). So I had to think of a place that no one would check up on me or question why I was there. Then it came to me; The bathroom.

Whenever a class would come up with a teacher I didn't like or there was a test that I didn't study for, I'd just go sit in a stall in the boy's bathroom for 30 minutes, or however long the class was. It went on for most of the trimester. That is until progress reports came out and I had a solid 7.2 out of 100 in my language arts class. Plus, teachers started questioning each other as to where I was and even pulled me out of other classes to make up tests I missed. I think the big kicker came when the only classes I seem to be attending without a stomach ache were Art and Band. So, needless to say, I stopped skipping.

I often wonder, though, if that's why I find such comfort in the bathroom today. I mean, look at me. I'm writing a blog from my toilet because it's the only place I can comfortably consider sitting down and writing it. Maybe it's because when I'm here, I don't feel like I have worry about the stresses of the world. I know nobody is going to barge in and start demanding something. I don't have to worry about anything(unless I'm constipated or something, but that hasn't been an issue yet).

In eighth grade, the bathroom was my safety zone. And perhaps, subconsciously, I still relate sitting on the toilet to being free of worry...

**Flush**

-Ryan
www.drinknthinkn.com