And I am so thankful.

I cannot tell you when it started, only when I knew it was happening.

Late October, 2010. Not quite at the point where I was on my vacation to Nevada, but close enough that it was a tangible thing. It was like being across the road from a mountain: close enough that you can just walk across the road and touch it, but not automatically within arm's reach. But you know it's there. You know it, because you can see it right in front of you. All you have to do is walk across that road.



Perhaps the reason it happened simply lay in the uncertainty of that trip. For a good chunk of time, my ability to attend lay in jeopardy because of a worsening financial situation. Thankfully my efforts to attend worked themselves out. In the end, the stress drained away and serenity remained.

Somewhere in that period of serenity, I realized I was lucky to be able to go.

In a sense, we all take certain things for granted. When we are young, we take for granted our youth and health. For my own part, I've noticed a tendency to take for granted that things will always be as they are now, or better. Every so often, I have to take a step back and realize that I'm not too far removed from my last year of college, when I had no job, no money, and uncertain future. As unsatisfied with my job as I am some days, I am lucky to have one when so many have none.

I took that step back in a grander sense somewhen during October's end. I realized in some other cosmic reality, it might not be me going on that vacation with people I'd known for ten years. I mean, if life is a journey of small steps, one step out of place can take you from your path. It wouldn't have taken much for any one of us to not be there. And indeed, some people who wanted to be there, weren't, due to circumstances beyond their short-term control.

And as I realized how lucky I was, I became so thankful that it was all going to work out. That I'd be able to reach out and touch that mountain.

I don't think I can adequately say that this feeling of gratitude began in October, though. In the back of my head, it's been growing for some time and now is just blossoming into something bigger. It's somehow appropriate, though, that this journey be realized around the time of the American Thanksgiving holiday. With that having just passed and being fresh in my history, here is a short list of things I am thankful for.

My Dad, Cecil Sears, and my brother, Jeff Sears. I do not want a life that never had you two in it.

My friends from SW-Fans.net and my fellow Deeznites. All of you are awesome. Do not ever think I do not appreciate your presence in my life.

My car. Being able to go from A to B by myself has opened a world of new doors.

My ability to communicate, especially with the written word.

My ability to cook that grows even now.

The music I've found and that I continue to be introduced to.

The sum total of everything else that goes into my wonderful little life.

And last, but certainly not least, how I was able to reach that mountain.



I didn't go over and hug the mountain though. I'm no Captain Kirk.

I'm not "That Kid" anymore.

It isn't often I discuss my failures. I don't have many.

Hear me out before you accuse me of ego. (I know I have one, that's just not the point right now)

What I mean here by failure is not lack of success. That happens to everyone; I'm no exception. The question is, how do you arrive at a lack of success? Do you use the right path and wind up lost by accident? Or do you set out with a route that crosses a "bridge to nowhere"?

"Failure" in this post's context is "going about a task in a way that I know ahead of time will fail". Sure, any idiot can screw something up if they don't know better. It takes a special kind of idiot to screw something up when they do know better.

At current, I count in my life three major failures of mine. The second is when I flunked out of college at Virginia Tech.

Flunked out is maybe the wrong word - I'm pretty sure they'd have let me come back, if I could afford it. My grades the first of my two semesters there weren't terrible. It was the second semester where I screwed around way too much. I had the motivation to do better than my first semester, but I got sick early, and in getting sick, I got lazy and complacent. Those were also the days when I was just discovering the internet as a social outlet. That didn't help.

So, I wound up with straight Fs that second semester. My parents no longer contributed to my schooling and I had no money. I wound up forced to return home and stuck there, bored, alone, miserable, and longing for a time machine to go back 8 months and give myself some "wear a bulletproof vest, Doc Brown" style advice.

The only person who I never felt judged me for screwing that opportunity up was my brother Jeff. I never forgot it and it still means everything to me. You're the best, bro.

Unfortunately, I was quite capable of judging myself and I know I judged me much harder than anyone else could've. Whether real or imagined, I don't know, but I convinced myself that everyone in my family looked on me as "That Kid". You know, "That Kid" who never does anything right. "That Kid" who'll never grow up. "That Kid" who'll never amount to anything.

I hated being "That Kid".

Coupled with my scholastic, social, and psychological failures was also a heavy monetary debt. I owed over five grand in student loans that I had no way to repay. In our society where progress too often gets measured by dollars in a bank account, my personal progress was measured in negative amounts.

How miserable! Quick, let's hop in my DeLorean and take a trip back to the future where it's a lot more pleasant.

In order to finish college, I had to borrow more money. I did succeed at righting myself this time - I graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a head on straight and full of knowledge. What's more, I had a magic piece of paper that said I could learn things when taught, follow instructions, oh, and I was hot chick magnet.

Okay, maybe that's not what college degrees say. (Except mine! Ha!)

The problem was, I graduated with a combination of credit card debt, VA Tech student loans, and VCU student loans totaling roughly $25 grand. I felt like I'd changed, but I didn't have a tangible measure of success to prove it to myself. I knew what I ought to do, though, and so I set myself a long term plan to deal with my financial obligations.

Today, I realized while budgeting that I've actually succeeded at setting and achieving my long-term goal to eliminate my debt. The payment plan I started three years ago now bears fruit: by the end of 2010 I will owe less than $10 grand in student loan debt.

That debt is the last holdover from my days in college. The last remote tie to that miserable time in the late 90s and the only one of my three major failures that holds me back in any way at all. In less than two years, it will be gone.

Truth be told, I doubt I was ever "That Kid" to anyone except myself. Even if I was, though, that time is long gone. My success over time proves to me, even if not to you, that I'm not "That Kid" anymore. And I never will be.

I believe the oddly great silver lining to any failure is the rebound. If you manage to overcome the things that held you back and succeed anyway, you feel a fabulous rush from triumph over failure and triumph of success. Even though it's a ways off, I can tell you this: at the end of 2012, I am gonna feel fan-damn-tastic.

Someone build me a flux capacitor and a Mr Fusion so I can go there and see what I have to look forward to!