what's the word, bill riley?

bill riley is the big man here at reznick group/baltimore. i met the guy once, when i was touring the building on my first day. seems like a nice person. anyway, i was thinking about him and all of the other principals, and it occurred to me that they have invested years of their lives in this business. do i have something like that? is there a job/cause/movement/hobby(?) that i could put years into? the only thing that i can think of so far is my schooling. whee. yeeha. but, it isn't until education becomes a choice, post-16-years-old, that i think of it as something i can count as an accomplishment, time-wise. so, that said, i've invested...seven years? i guess i want to find something, you know?

running. 15 years. excellent. time off here and there, but it's been a major part of my life since i was 11. so what does that make me? crazy, some say, especially since i've done the marathon. and i would have to agree.

school. "only" 2 years, but crazy amounts of blood, sweat, and tears went into that master's. heavy on the tears. quantitatively, it's given me two years of extra stress and $20K of school loans with no extra leg up on the job market. but let's not look at that side. it's not the most important. someday, it will be a stepping stone for a PhD. today, i look at it and see that what i did is not something that everybody can do. it was also something i loved. who gets to watch Indiana Jones movies and write about it for a grade?! who gets to sit around with their peers for hours and hours, going on about the present-day implications of whether or not people are allowed to read in their native language? i miss that. and i have always believed that things happen for a reason. my masters was a time of upheaval and rebuilding. to be honest, i loved derek, but it was good that we broke up. it was good that i had to struggle with life for a while. it was good that i allowed myself to be open to other people again, to allow myself to trust and be vulnerable. it was good that i soon wanted to get out on my own; i'd been very timid before and hadn't much followed my own path, at least not with a lot of confidence. and so i graduated, tears behind me, having flushed out my self-imposed toxicity.

that is a good return on an investment.