What Were You Doing Five Years Ago?

2. I thought for a minute you said SHE was 5 years old.

3. This is a little like the old '1994' question isn't it?

4. 5 years ago: I was a more garrulous, less effective writer than I am now. This will come as a surprise to those who have read my work and consider me a garrulous, ineffective writer.

I was also a less accomplished songwriter and had written perhaps, ooh, 120 fewer songs; and those 120 include almost all the best songs I have ever written. That if nothing else is cause for some 5-year satisfaction, for me if for no-one else.

I am less happy now.

I was quite disillusioned with university - I thought there would be interesting and intelligent people there who would relish in interesting and intelligent conversation; I thought it would be my big chance to get laid; I was SO wrong.

I'm happier now, for sure.

I was also single, and very aware of the fact. This one change over the last five years means I'm far happier now.

Hmm: nostalging about old times gives me a soppy warm glow, but looking back at what sort of person I was then makes me shudder. Am I a nicer person now than five years ago?

But I'm happier. In the past five years I started writing and got better at it, and I've still got most of the friends I had then and more new ones than I could possibly have expected. I have also got serious motivational and self-discipline problems which I need to sort out pronto, but on balance I feel a good deal better about everything than I did in '96. So there.

These days, much more happier than I realized I was at that time! I wasn't unhappy, as noted, just everything's a lot more settled -- regular job on that campus that I enjoy, ever-improving living arrangements, more close friends in real life and on-line, more money for music and books and the like, a greater range of places to eat around here and more. In love, just with someone else. ;-)

I'm *ever* so much happier now.

My mum also suffered an aneurysm in the same month and was saved only because she suffered it at work.

Some decades, you know, you're better off staying in bed.

that particular summer i had a government job in jasper national park, which is absolutely gorgeous. they flew me out there and paid food and shelter (in a house with four guys from other parts of the country) and paid me to work f/t. because i got some hiking, biking, and camping in, i was in better shape than i am now (i had to buy a boys'-size belt today!). in a month i'd start tae kwon do, which i regret having had to stop in university.

i was the most activist radical 17-year-old ever, a founding member of the social justice youth collective. though that summer i was in a weird stage of disillusionment and ultra-solipsistic questioning of every belief and trying to ground everything, all of which probably made me the most unbearable person to be around.

i didn't drink or do drugs, which didn't help either.

i was less socially ept than i am now. i was in the process of getting alienated from/alienating most of my friends. i had a hapless crush on a friend, with whom i had an unfulfilled moment of ambiguity some years later.

i was getting alienated from the post-sonic-youth/post-hardcore band i was in at the time. everyone else was getting into post- and math rock. i wasn't. it was maybe a month before i'd even bought a glenn branca cd. punk and indie shows were my main social anchor.

i'd recently got my hair cut short from the shoulder-length it was before. soon i'd get it shaved off and grow a beard.

I was fairly content - I had my flat, my stereo, my VCR and a hefty bank balance. I read keenly and rented lots of films. I was still clinging to the notion that I was smart. My social life was always on the end of long train journey - on Merseyside, in London or the East Midlands. Weekends would pass without me exchanging a word with another soul (especially if I'd got the shopping in on the Thursday night).

I may or may not have heard Belle and Sebastian by this time (the catalyst of change, though I wouldn't know it for a year).

Very difficult to compare then with now. Married, but broke. London, but unemployed. Mortgage and lots of chums. So much has changed I don't even feel my life had started then. I moved from a two-dimensional world in a three-dimensional one. If all you know are the x- and y-axes...

Five years ago I was dating Dave. That's all I will say. I am much happier now.

Surprisingly, I'm much happier now.

i was maybe thinking this date could be going somewhere.

was thinking i shouldn't have acted like a prude when my date fondled me at the restaurant

ha

i am a perfect gentleman for the first 75% of a first date, i'll have you know. depending how it's going, anything goes after that.

Five years ago I wasn't doing very much at all. My diary shows that I was long on talk, short on action.

Failing out of school, living with my parents, had just lost my cat of 17 years to cancer. Good times.

basically living in a squat where i was the only one left on the lease in the death throes of a fairly terrible relationship. its been a good 5 years

Five years ago, Chicago threads didn't get beyond about 2000 posts, because that seemed reasonable enough. Also, I liked to start them a lot. I had a new girlfriend, and that's gone amazingly well since then -- better and better, really. I was living in an apartment that was literally falling apart. Every time it rained, a new chunk of plaster would fall out of the ceiling onto my kitchen floor. I drank WAY too much. I listened to a lot more music and a lot fewer podcasts. My orange kitty was still a skinny little thing. I wore the same pair of glasses that I'm wearing at this moment. These glasses have been troopers.

aw TT RIP. that reminds me I had just lost my cat of 18 yrs. fucked up how the most prominent memory of him now is of that last da: him not being able to move, feeding him some melted ice cream before we left for the vet, carrying him like a bag of bones in a cardboard box, crying into my dad's shoulder as he took his last breaths. hard to believe it's been 5 yrs.

Hell of a thread . . .

I was getting ready to study for finals my 5/6 semester in law school, missing my wife who had just moved to CA for a job, arguing with my then-roommate brother about the lack of heat in the apartment, worrying about not having a job after school, but enjoying still living in DC.

Since then, I made several attempts at the CA bar exam, the final one two years ago was successful; I've had two law jobs, one bartending gig, I've been to three weddings, three Bonnaroos, have bought a house, and have put in two years of being an employment lawyer. Insert a healthy amount of drinking, partying, playing music, making and losing friends, and driving.