Prom fallout

Ok, there are two other parts to the prom story that I wasn’t able to fit into yesterday’s epic. One was cut for space and the other was actually my original ending but I figured that I will need more than a paragraph for it and it changed the entire tone of the piece. Anyway, here are the two points.

The first is that the reason I titled the post “Still the Night” is because that was the actual prom theme. It’s been fifteen years and I still don’t have a freaking clue what that means. It’s not over yet? The sun hasn’t risen? People explained it to me but like much of my high school experience, the reference went over my head. Tying into this is that my prom song was by The Bodeans. The one that goes, “If I could hold you tonight, I would never let go…” We had to have been the only school out of the Milwaukee area to decide that a Bodeans song would be a fitting sonic backdrop to that pivotal moment of your teenage years. Again, while a lot of music in the early nineties rocked, there was also, well, the Bodeans.

The second point is a lot more important. While I was writing this piece I had a thought running through my head and I need to discuss it here. For the past five years Erik has been giving me the following piece of advice and to his eternal dismay I never listen. Which is that “The future is a horrible place to put your better days.” And no matter how many times he tells me that I never fully realize that is what I have done my entire life.

Because when you read the prom story it is one of a guy who comes out of his shell right as it is time to go. And if you think about where I was three years ago I, well, came out of my shell right before it was time to say goodbye to everyone. There are a lot of reasons behind it. One is that I spend a lot of energy wondering about the impression people have of me and I do everything to make sure that it is perfect until I reach the point where I decide that in a few weeks I’ll never see them again and be me for a change. But it’s also that I am always focused on setting up my life for that next step and I never stop to be in the moment and just relax like everyone else does. A lot of people reading this have looked at me while were at the Backer and realized that I was still working finance problems in my head. Didn’t matter that it was two in the morning, I knew that if I wanted my career to be smooth sailing upon graduation I had to figure out the answer. So in high school I set the path to college, in college I set the path to engineering, in my first job I set the path to b-school, b-school set the path to a new career and the new career took me to Kansas.

(Remind that next time I plan out my life to use a map.)

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I need to find a way to live in the moment without having to be in a state of constantly leaving. Or to just find out how to make myself not care what the world around me thinks. If there is a struggle in my life that I am trying to overcome right now, this is it.