10 Years ago I was 12 years old and a 7th grader at Bowditch middle school in Foster City answering a question about what I was gonna do on Y2K (remember calling it that?) I told the yearbook people that I was going to go looting. I'm still pretty proud of that smartass comment but they censored me and wrote that I planned on "running to the bank." Kinda lacks the edge of the looting broken glass everywhere people pissing in the streets like they just don't care but it got printed anyways.
10 years ago I had just started Tae Kwon Do, my favorite bands were Limp Bizkit, Korn and Metallica. Rap rock/nu-metal was the shit and I was too cool to listen to hip hop. Besides Outkast, whose Stankonia album was my guilty hidden pleasure. Around that time I had green hair, BFD and Not So Silent Night were the highlights of the year and girls were terrifying. My dog Emma was barely out of her puppy years and my Grandpa was still alive.
10 years later I had started the experiment of "finding myself." First in high school when I stopped listening to the radio and went on a hardcore classic rock binge. I started to love doing tech crew at the theatre (rail FTW), and Tae Kwon Do essentially dominated my life. Despite my complete sobriety my long hair and constant sleeping in class made people think I smoked a ton and was sort of a punk? During this time I started to do student government, first mostly because I thought running was fun. I got the chance to make ridiculous posters like "in the land of the whopper, the misha is king" and I would make 40 and they'd all be different and equally ridiculous. It sucks I can't remember more of them. I got the chance to grow and make friendships that I expect to last the duration of my life. From the G-Unit to my teammates ate TKD this really sort of laid the foundation for me. Somehow I ended up being SB Treasurer and some other stuff and I also discovered that I love cars.
"Finding Myself" pt 2 was college, 2 years at UCSC, 2 years at UCLA. It seems too soon to really reflect on it but this was the time for partying. A lot. And traveling, more than I thought I would by this age. Making new friends that I also suspect will be with me for the long run, mostly from ucsc but there's def some LA folks there too. From Wednesday night MESH parties, to my stint in the fraternity world, to the crackin 120 Mountain View days to the 645 Midvale best backyard of your life times college was awesome. From Thailand, Hong Kong, most of Western Europe, to Japan, to Hawai'i, to Shanghai I really got to see a lot. I started to get passionate about history and figuring out the context to our modern lives and what social justice meant. From David Henry Anthony III's lectures on privelege and sacrifice to the 30 plus gray hairs from my tenure as APC Director big shit was poppin.
Here I am today. 22. Interning in DC, lying on a friends couch in NYC, thinking about the places I'll go with my head full of brains and my Jordan XI Space Jams full of feet and I can't help but feel excited for the next ten years.
Ten years from now I will be 32. Hopefully healthy. Possibly Married. Possibly with kids (twins named GreatestEver and ElFuego). Hopefully with several pugs. Hopefully some sort of amazing lawyer who has found a way to reconcile his desires for material pleasures and his beliefs in social justice. But really it's hard to say. If you asked me ten years ago what I'd be doing when I was 22 I'd tell you to shove it and throw out some monty python quote. I might still do that today. But at least my arsenal of quotes is populated my more simpsons and arrested development and for that I am grateful. I'm fairly satisfied with the last decade. Not to say that I don't have regrets, long hair, not going for it, etc but I'm still pretty happy with the last decade. Hopefully when 2020 (barbara walters voice!) rolls around I'll be able to stay the same.
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