I was having one of those retro conversations with M.M. the other day. You know those conversations, especially if you are a child of the 80's . Do you remember Thundercats? Did you beat Super Mario Brothers? Do you remember glam rock? It seems like our generation has a great nostalgia for our youth, to remember things that bring smiles to our face, I mean we are regurgitating the 1980's everyday( See GI-Joe, Transformers, Michael Jackson) we can't get enough of it. My buddy Lou even mentioned to me once and from what I gathered about it was that we are just an uncreative generation we take things from our past, re-package, sell it, if it makes money, rinse, repeat, and do it till it eventually dies.......see Transformers 2..... anyways on that note M.M. eventually bought up the subject of the choose your own adventure books, which I absolutely loved as a kid.
Now for those who remember those books, choose your adventure basically allowed you to read up to a page in the book where there was a fork in the road to either A) go to page 53 to go one way or B) go to page 78 and go another way. As a curious little tyke I would always do both adventures, just because I always wondered what if I went one way as opposed to going the other way. Sometimes it hurts me in life because I eventually paralyze myself into just staying put and doing nothing. I tend to over think! Life would be so much easier if we could see either end of the path we choose. It would never leave us up at night question what if I went that way, what would have happened.
Thinking of my life up to this point, I truly enjoy all of the choices I have made. One of the first forks in the road in my life, was choosing college. I was choosing between Scranton and Iona or a third possibility was to stay at home in Staten Island. I ended up at Iona, and to anyone who knows me, knows how my life played out, I don't need to mention I ran Greek council or anything along those lines. What if I went to Scranton, would I be married with a kid to a girl named Beth Ann right now working for Michael Scott at Dunler Mifflin? If I stayed in Staten Island, would I have a fake tan working out 5X's a week, with cool spiky hair? Wait a sec that wouldn't even be possible, but point being I could have went that option. Instead the path I chose was to go to Iona, where I met some great people, wrecked my body and went on to my career.
That was the first major fork in the road, and of course there were many other forks in the road after that whether it be my career, my love life, and so on. I always felt that I chose the right path. In these uncertain times, again I feel like I am at a major fork in the road, sitting up at night wondering what is to be. So with that being said I'm taking an aggressive move in life. I decided in the Fall to attend Graduate School. I feel like this is a choose your own adventure book, I am about to hit 30, well at least all the surprise balloons are telling me I am. At this fork in the road, I can go many different ways, I feel like it is more than a fork. I ended up choosing this path because I feel like this can lead me to all other forks in the road, mostly good ones. If I were to choose my own adventure to go the other way, I feel like I would be left with less choices in life which ultimately led me to go this route.
Now I know this path is going to be an arduous one, hell I suck lately at posting blogs, I might not have the time to do this much more, it might just be more quick hits similar to twitter.com/tpalmeri. The first step along this road is starting up my own frat AKA Old School. I figure I get a close network of guys who can eventually take over the world with home base being 430, I hope M.M. doesn't mind serving beer from the keg on the 12Th of Sept for our inaugural rush. In all seriousness though, I do plan on taking the knowledge and contacts from school and playing it to my favor. Life is one great adventure, unfortunately we have to choose a path and go for it and not look back at what could have been. Drive fast down that lane and head straight towards your goal and don't look back, don't ever look back.
TP
