21 October 2007

What If?

We all play the 'What If?' game at some point. 'What If I'd lived in this city instead of that one?' 'What If I'd gone to this school?''What If I'd moved out sooner/later/not broken up with/etc?' It can be a useful tool to see where you want to move forward with your life.

The weird part about it is that we're not very good at the game. Certain changes aren't accounted for and other variables cannot be calculated. For instance, I've been typing up a story I wrote in middle school. It was set in the future which is now the past. It's interesting to see what I predicted, how little understanding I had of certain things (like technology) and that all my friends in the story are people I knew at the time in middle school. It was as if I expected to know those people the rest of my life. That said, I do still have contact with people I knew in middle school. In the past couple weeks I realized that I'd bumped into someone I was pals with in middle school. Neither of us realized we knew each other at the time. Weird how that works sometimes.

I guess my point is that we (or at least I guess I do) generally expect certain things to remain constant. Certain good things in our lives shouldn't go away so we don't, or can't, picture those changes. Friends moving away, buildings burning down, businesses closing; these things shouldn't happen to the good things in our lives but sometimes they do. It's not the change we want but sometimes it's the change that happens.

Last night we played 'What If?' a few times. 'What If we all move to Colorado?' 'What If George had played high school football?' 'What If Katy and Eric's son marries George and Amy's daughter?' Looking forward and looking back. What would change? What would be the same?

I have the feeling of great change yet ahead of me. Change in and of itself doesn't bother me like it once did. I hate change for the sake of change, changes made in an effort to 'look busy'. At least one big something is going to change for me soon, perhaps a couple somethings. There's rumblings afoot and I've no clue to what level it will alter things. That's the problem with rumblings. They are indistinct by nature.

One thing I have no interest in letting change is my writing and by that I mean that I have no interest in stopping. It would be too fundamental a change and I don't like what I 'see' of that me. If that means this blogging thing stays weekly for the time being while I work on everything else, that's not a problem for me.

I wonder what's going to happen. What Then?

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