I thought a lot about what I might 

Think at such milestones, but just 

Like every other marker, it came and 

Went, with takeaways: Arrive, 

Experience, Learn, Evolve. 

A shame, how long 

…it’s a difficult Sunday when I have more than ten tabs open

and multiple social media applications are telling me which clothes are the best and which

models are the prettiest and most handsome and which shoes will make me feel better

about my life while at the same time my mind reminds me that last night’s flurries and

this week’s projected high temperatures herald the disappearance of a winter barely felt

only to usher in a spring full of To-Do Lists and a general anxiety that suggests all is not

well–not well at all–and the neurons firing more rapidly than an M41A Pulse Rifle in

synapses deeper than the Mariana Trench between my hemispheres and I’m

remembering seeing a Lamborghini when I was seven years old seated in the back seat

with my older cousin

who swore it was a “Fiarri” and I had to correct him. This is happening at the same time

that Asahi makes me wonder if it is, in fact, Japan’s No. 1 Beer, and I think about which

snow cone flavors are the best after you ride your BMX to a local pool or arcade. Politicians

are on TV talking about their dick size, heroin and crystal meth are in apartments in

neighborhoods where ice-cream truck soundtracks used to ring when parents were close

to the end of their workday. All of this, and my User Progress is incrementally creeping up

in an online class that will serve as a functional fractional effort to boost my meager salary

which will become wholly unnecessary the moment I sell this house which I can afford

solely through the willpower to work multiple jobs in a town that is not mine in a

community that does not want progress in a state that consistently ranks in the bottom

ten percent of anything that is ranked by magazines in an area of the country that was

once a Captain of Industry. I am left wondering what happened to imagination and being

unnaturally naturally happy and thinking about the next cool thing to do while reading

books or watching movies and spending time with people that made you feel good and

how that is not necessarily a thing when you are an adult. It is at this point in time that I

push this particular train through the tunnel and see how many of you will read it and

think about the last time you

 

…standing there for a second, unsure of what to do. The light refused to show him, which did not quite make sense. His shoulder shifted, and part of the empty parking lot behind him was obscured. He took a long sip, and sighed deeply. “Now,” he growled. “I’ve been around a long, long time. Watching. And I never could understand why people keep doing things they don’t like doing.”

“That’s how a lot of misery is spread in this world.”