Part of the inspiration for this node comes from simply having listened to the soundtracks of the movies Reality Bites and Singles. These were the years of grunge, my college years. The more I look back on them, I become aware that maybe not a lot happened during those years as far as major advances in culture, society or economics, but enough was going on with me to make it a significant stretch of time. My first exposure to the internet, IRC in its DOS form, e-mail.

My first introduction to electric solitaire on rainy Saturday afternoons, Waffle House, Mountain Dew as mid-term pre-requisite, hot dogs from the cafeteria that were labeled Grade E: Still edible, combat boots and Converse low-tops, Henry Rollins, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Live, They Might Be Giants, Phish, coffee or beer for breakfast, bong circles, acid trips on Earth Day, camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Dave Matthews Band as a local upstart, coffee shops that sprang up overnight, hiked up prices of school bookstore CD's, and those little ID wallets with key chains on them. The realization that adults didn't have much of a clue either, no matter how nice their offices were. That all the cool professors wore Birkenstocks and gray socks and would often be found smoking on the steps of the English Department, reading a non-curriculum book or chasing coffee after coffee in the teacher's lounge, just wanting to be left alone.

I wonder what those of us who were not in college during this time period lived through, what they experienced that I was ignorant of because I was in school. What realties was I buffered from in the protective, ivy-overgrown, Georgia red brick dorm rooms of Lynchburg, Virginia.

For all the reminiscing, however, I didn't accomplish much of anything substantial, meaning anything I could use to help me through this year, the year I am trying to make sense of myself, to myself, before I make any steps into the future. It was mostly fluff, those years, which I suppose is what allows me to look back at them with teary-eyed fondness.

We are almost through the year 2000, and only now am I seeing that my resolutions were bunk, not made of the stuff I need them to be now. I had no idea what I was in for when I made them. Even as recently as New Year's, I thought I had my shit together. But I don't. I just don't. But, it's OK that I don't. It feels almost pleasant to realize that I am not finished in my self-therapy, that I have ended. I don't think I could have gone any further with my life if I hadn't made some realizations. Nothing really stops until it ends, and I'm not ready to end yet, not by a long shot.

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