Twenty Years Ago
Completed on August 21st, 2011.
My cat Mouse was born twenty years ago today, and though I had to have him put him to sleep about a year and a half ago due to tongue cancer, it made me think about the things that have happened over the past twenty years that have affected my life.
When I was 11, I didn’t have much of an idea that I’d be where I am today, though I can see that things haven’t changed too much. Outside of losing a lot of the extra weight that I put on during my earlier years, a lot of the concepts in my life at that time are still present today.
At that age, I was deep into gaming and it was the thing I did the most. My love for the NES was in full swing and one was hard-pressed to get me away from my favorite games. Twenty years later, I’m still a gamer and still fire up the NES on occasion, though that will happen with greater frequency in the near future as I’m planning to bring Nintendo-A-GoGo back properly.
I was also an avid reader at that time, recently discovering the works of Stephen King and reading them with a voracious intensity. I read “It” at the age of twelve in about two weeks, which is no small feat as the book is nearly 1100 pages long. I still read some these days, though I read more things online than I do in book form. That’s changing a little bit as I’m making more time to read in the evenings. I need to put a limit on that, as I tend to read way past the time I should be going to sleep.
I was somewhat into music at the time, but my only real source for it was MTV. I took piano lessons for a while at that age, learning more of a jazz style and specifically requesting to learn “November Rain” by Guns ’n Roses, which my teacher was happy to get me sheet music for. I learned it at the time and I still have the sheet music around here somewhere.
As for music now, I find it all on the internet. I started searching for music online as soon as I was able to, and my last real non-internet influence was Headbanger’s Ball. I did get into certain bands thanks to friends and co-workers over the years, but it’s mostly been through Thomas Wolmer’s old metal band lists, word of mouth online, Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music, and YouTube.
As for the creation of music, it’s somewhat on the back burner right now due to being in a heavy studying phase for my upcoming project. I’m spending some time working on a couple of different drum and bass video game covers, but I’m spending a lot more time studying the works of other drum and bass artists, as well as looking for production tips on how I can make my drum and bass songs sound as good as possible. Once I get going with the songs, I hope that I can just stick with this project for the next few years, if not for the duration.
Concerning the normal life goals that most folks go for, I’ve managed to eschew them due to my workaholic tendencies (which are tapering off slightly) and my frugality (which is definitely increasing). When I was 11, I figured that I would take the usual life path – get married, have kids, etc etc.
Then, I started gaining more and more weight, my self-esteem went down the tubes, and I figured I’d be alone for the rest of my life because I wasn’t “good enough”. I was single throughout high school and a relationship I had in community college around my 20th birthday further reinforced this idea. I’ve had a couple short relationships since, but none since I really started reining in my self-created problems from the age of 28 on. My last date was over four years ago and I have no feelings towards that fact at all.
Now at 31, the weight’s mostly gone and the self-esteem is certainly in good shape, but my main focus in life is to create and build multiple streams of income, rather than create multiple streams of expenditures. I save as much money from my job as I can in order to invest that money into dividend-paying stocks, and with the market currently being in a slump, I’ll be able to buy more shares than usual, which will increase the amount of dividends I’m receiving, pending none of the companies I’m investing in slash their dividends.
Once I get to an amount of dividend payout close to my paycheck, I’ll likely leave the 9-5 schematic and focus on my own projects, whether they be profitable or not. In the interim, I’m working on making some of my projects profitable that revolve around the interests I spoke of at the beginning of this piece – gaming, music, and writing.
Though this would have been Mouse’s 20th birthday, I didn’t acquire him until a couple months after he was born. I remember that he was quite the handful, but as he aged, he settled down and became a great companion. This also helped to nurture my love of cats, as I have two now and enjoy their company as much as I can.
Things really haven’t changed much in the last 20 years and it really has been a simple life, mainly because I’ve kept it that way. I’m trying to simplify it even more as I go, mainly because I still have a lot of things to sort through that I acquired in my earlier years. I’ll get through these things in due time and make my life that much more enjoyable.
As for Mouse, I do still wish he was around, though sometimes more than others. Last weekend when I was sick with a fairly nasty head cold, Barclay and Bootsie were resting near each other and after petting the both of them, I remember a strong feeling of wanting to pet Mouse as well. It’s sad to think about, but it’s like the song goes – “nothin’ lasts forever, even cold November rain”.
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