Yesterday...All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away...

I'm going to let you in on a little secret:  I wrote a book before I wrote I'm Stalking Jake!

My first book (unpublished) was called Shoot Me, Stuff Me, Mount Me (much like my blogger alias, I stole the title from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and it was about my life as a college student, focusing primarily on all the boys I had crushes on.  I was thinking about my subject matter a few weeks ago, actually, and contemplating how my most epic artistic creations always seem to be centered around guys I think are hot.  So OH MY GOD, I thought, I'm basically the Taylor Swift of the writing world.  And that seemed funnier a few weeks ago than it does now...

ANYWAY.  The story I posted several days ago about Kara and me hanging out with the Queen came from Shoot Me, Stuff Me, Mount Me, and I posted that story for two reasons:  1) It is perhaps the most classic and well-known Becky/Kara story out there, and 2) nothing else in that book is really fit to see the light of day.  As a 22-year-old, I was a horrible, bitchy person who thought every guy on campus was in love with me and every girl on campus was jealous of my awesomeness and who wrote things like, "When I saw Mean Girls, I realized that I was one of them.  And it felt fabulous."

Jesus.  Christ.

For a while, I've been toying with the idea of posting bits and pieces of it in installment form at beckyheineke.com, but I have yet to talk myself into subjecting myself to that level of humiliation.  And as fascinating as I no doubt found it at the time to catalog the length of every skirt I wore (the shortest was 10") and every instance of sharing longing looks across the cafeteria with guys I only had a 50% chance of ever actually speaking to, I don't think anyone else would think that shit's interesting.  (Also, I might want to fictionalize it one day, so I don't want to tip my hand just yet.)

Why am I telling you all of this? 

Because recently there have been a lot of changes in my life -- most of them bad -- and I've been doing quite a bit of clichéd reminiscing...and skimming through that book.

Adding to the nostalgia is that two days ago marked three years since Jake Watch ended.  (Three years!)  I spent those three years writing I'm Stalking Jake! and getting it published.  I spent them planning this blog, writing this blog, realizing I didn't want to write this blog the way I was writing it...  I spent them working a job I hated, getting laid off from that job in the middle of a recession, and then learning the ins and outs of unemployment...  I spent them pounding out my frustrations as I ran hundreds of miles and typed millions of words...  I spent them watching my friends move away from me, one by one...  I spent them drinking, laughing, crying...  I spent them campaigning, reading, coming in last in road races...  I spent them traveling and thinking...  I spent them in pain, in anxiety, in irritation, in anger...  I spent them watching those around me get married, give birth, die... 

I spent them living my life.  I spent them in a world where, for the first time in my short existence, I had no one unique distraction to come back to.  No college, no celebrity blogging, no romanticized member of the opposite sex to focus on.  These past three years, I have changed in ways that I couldn't have fathomed beforehand.  And it's not just that I barely recognize that girl in the first book, who had never written a blog, who had never had a full-time job, who was more concerned about what she was going to wear to Casino Night than how she did on her senior seminar presentation (though I can assure you she outdid herself on both counts), it's that that girl may have been a whiny, self-centered brat, but goddammit, she had more fun than I do.

The short of it:  "Growing up" is highly overrated.