This past weekend, my collegiate class – the Georgetown Class of 2009 – returned to campus for our 10 year reunion.  Although I did not endure the cross-country flight to formally attend, I immersed myself in the experience online via social media and in my own cringe-crusted memories and nostalgia.

I am alarmed by how quickly 10 years can pass.  The decade felt so short, but also long enough to have created something of meaning and significance.  In this “longest-shortest” time frame, I often oscillate between feeling excited about how far I come and disappointed that I haven’t come far enough.  I am both proud of the life I have cultivated in 10 years, but also caught in moments where I feel that I didn’t live up to the time I was given.

On the night before I graduation, I got into a taxi cab (yes, I’m that old) where the driver asked me how my night was.  I had just treated my family to a dinner that I was able to pay for.  I finished a writing project I was incredibly proud of and felt so much possibility in my creative career.  I was going to move to San Francisco.  I felt absolutely luminous.

It is now 2019 and I wouldn’t say “luminous” is how I feel.  In 10 years, I’ve learned to add qualifiers to my twentysomething qualities – I am “cautiously” hopeful, “strategically” generous with my time, and a “part-time” writer.

A lot can happen in 10 years and so can very little.  My main reflection this past weekend was whether I still feel as idealistic at 32 as I did when I was 22 – was that 10 years enough to chip away at my once impenetrably hopeful disposition?

Here’s the product of my reflection – a chart of my last 10 years measuring units of idealism versus time:

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• 2009 / Age 22: “I’m gonna change the world!”
• 2010 / Age 23: “I can’t afford to stay alive.”
• 2011 / Age 24: Party on Tuesday, work on Wednesday.
• 2012 / Age 25: “Yay!  Grad school!”
• 2013 / Age 26: “God, I’m still in grad school.”
• 2014 / Age 27: “I get to live with my partner!”
• 2015 / Age 28: Another fight at Ikea.
• 2016 / Age 29: The Election.
• 2017 / Age 30: Hurricane Harvey.
• 2018 / Age 31: Re-evaluating what’s important.  Also, having symptoms of acid reflux…
• 2019 / Age 32: Recognizing what’s actually important.

In a previous post, I wrote about my conversations with my father, which have always been short, direct, and full of understood silence.  With each conversation, I have been trying to stretch the minutes with my dad.  As we both age — he in his 70s, me slouching through my 30s — we have developed a mutual understanding that the number of conversations we have left together is limited.  Every minute counts.

My mother, however, is a different story with a binary problem.  I have never had an issue stretching the minutes — only cutting off the rhythm of her exposition, especially in circumstances where I have to go to the bathroom, I’m hungry, or I’m just really exhausted.  A combination of all 3 happen during a single conversation.  Although drastically different from my father, I also value these conversations given how valuable our time is together….but, I have needs too.

Here’s an anatomy of a conversation with my mom — a 3 act play, if you will.

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Act I: “Can You Hear Me Now?”

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Act II: “Inception.”

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Act 3: “Desperate, Regrettable Measures.”