Horsmanistan

Actually getting a comment on this blog (from an old friend no less), reminded me of 1996, the other worst year ever of my life. Oh not really in either case: 2004 has been good, mostly, and the trials of 1996 are trivial with distance. 1996 was the year I graduated from college and learned that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but that whatever it was probably had nothing to do with the stuff I had been studying. Also, I had one of those series of emotional experiences where one is left with the uncomforting fact that perhaps one is... well, a bit of an asshole, isn't one? Yes. Unpleasant. I drank a bit that year, read a lot of Philip K. Dick (Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said came along at just the right time), and eventually settled into the retail career path that pulled me from Princeton to Reading to Ann Arbor. Along the way I got married.

Somehow, I've managed to have exactly the quiet life I was looking for, though I didn't always know it. Funny that.