Monday 1.30.06
I think at this point I've developed the urge to memorialize all the things I could have become but didn't...

I guess I've reached the age at which I am no longer the person with so much potential. My actuality is what it is, and what it isn't, is not.

Which leads me to this multifaceted interest, this desire to (in my spare time?) develop new skills or gather new knowledge, so that I can somehow through activity push forward that magical potential.

Three things have contributed to this:
--My life partner, with whom I share a great love, nevertheless sees almost as defects the things I love most about myself. My partner would be overjoyed were I to close some chapters of my life and pursuits and, instead, focus more on traditional roles and "duties." BLECH!
--I have become a parent. I will never again be the most important person in the world, and I have discovered an entire new spectrum of ambition and failure. (Mostly it's wonderful, and often it's bliss. But it does totally reconfigure one's life and make things that would previously seem to be great successes into small things, and make previously only tough things incredibly hard.)
--I have turned 30.

At least the last point I share with others of a contemplative bent, thanks to a blog I stumbled onto (www.jdedman.com.)

I will attempt to address some of these things in the way that seems most natural to me--by writing about them--here.