None of the milestones in my life turned out the way I expected them to. Growing up, my head was full of fantasies about how things would go when I hit major milestones:
- High School
- Graduation
- Prom Night
- College
- Getting Married
- First “Real” Job
- Buying A Home
- Having Kids
- Growing Old
None of them happened the way I had imagined.
Happy Days, Revenge of The Nerds, Welcome Back Kotter, My Three Sons, The ABC Movie Of The Week, The Breakfast Club, Risky Business and uncountable other TV shows, movies and books shaped my imagination.
Not a single milestone came close to what I had envisioned.
Life, at least my life, was much less dramatic. Most things took longer and cost more than I anticipated. Many never materialized at all.
Many years of anticipation were based entirely on fiction.
I’m not complaining. I’ve had a pretty fantastic life. It was unpredictable to me, but perhaps someone older and more experienced could have foreseen it unfolding exactly this way.
In retrospect, it’s totally obvious to me why many milestones happened the way they did.
But, I’m really good at predicting the past.
It’s the future that I rarely get right.