20 Years Well-Wasted

I turned 18 the summer after high school graduation. On that birthday,  I was working  my first paid job (a summer internship), enjoying my last summer with high school friends before we all scattered to the winds for college.  For my birthday lunch, a coworker and I walked down to register to vote in (and for absentee ballots for) the fall's presidential election. That evening, I had friends over to celebrate. One of our last get-togethers before the first of the college-bound left for school in August.

Joy abounded that summer: our little group of friends tried to wring every last remaining ounce out of our childhoods that we could. I was excited to go to a great college, far enough from home that none would have preconceived notions of who I was, based neither on the antics of my barely-older brother, nor on who they'd known me as since pre-school.

There was also a lot of fear: wondering what the future would hold, scared of moving to a school hours from home, afraid that I'd chosen the school where I'd be a much smaller fish, worried  that my extreme shyness would cripple me in a world where I knew not a soul. Fear of the unknown. Of holding my own.

That milestone birthday was 20 years ago, yesterday.

This week, I find myself reflecting on the hopes, the fears, the expectations I held that day, standing on the threshold of adulthood. And I can't help but make the comparison to the reality.  As Brad Paisley sings, "Welcome to the future."  

In most ways, my life has taken directions I never could have imagined. (But really, who DOES imagine being a "software quality manager"?)   

There are goals I haven't met: 

I didn't become a famous scientist or journalist, or really an expert in any one thing. 

I  have yet to reach Earth's orbit; to outdo my brother in salary, education, or title; 

to increase my '"visited countries" list (aside from several Caribbean nations). 

I've found many friends along the way, but not the close clique of local "lifetime" girlfriends I've always coveted.

But in the ways that truly matter, and that I never remotely expected, the unfathomable reality has exceeded my dreams: 

I fell almost by accident into a a career that meshes weirdly well with my puzzle-minded anal-retentive, yet people-oriented  brain.  

I've made friends across the country and world that have opened my eyes and my mind. 

I learned to eat - and enjoy - foods that look, smell, or sound weird.  

I fell in love with a great guy who has become my best friend, who has tempered my tightly-wound brain with his loose go-with-the-flow attitude.   

I've learned to listen to country music. And like it.

I've lived in 4 additional states.

I've travelled extensively inside the boundaries of the good old USA:  now lacking only Louisiana and South Carolina in my bucket list.  (I expect to remedy one of those before the month is out.)    

I am surrounded by an amazing family, old and new, by blood and by marriage, that I've always managed to find time to connect and reconnect with.

It's not the life I expected when I turned 18…  it is in some ways smaller, but in many ways so much more. 

I've learned that the true measure of success is not in titles, dollar signs, a collection of things, or the size of an office; but rather in quality connections with truly good people,  in enjoying what I do with my time, in leaving more smiles and giggles and happy thoughts and memories behind than sadness: in spreading at least a little bit of pixie dust and magic.

All in all, I'd say the last 20 years (to borrow from yet another country song) has been "Time well wasted."