#307 - the good old days

what does that phrase mean? i mean, of course i know what it means, but the words make no sense unless you understand the context, which is the case with most of english obviously, but i still don't like to use it. the only reason i use it to name this post is to make this point... that i don't like it and don't like to use it. ha.

anyway, being back to work for one week after a vacation-filled december has made me a bit nostalgic. not for too long ago, just a few years back, in my third year of undergrad. at that time i had finally chosen a major, but had taken all my intro-to-that-major classes a year earlier (to see if i really liked it) and so for the first sememster of my third year i was taking all the back-up pre-requisite courses that i was missing and so i had just a few classes (i took one online) and a lot of extra time (because those classes were retarded and i didn't need to study for any of them... and quite frankly, i really didn't care what grade i got in them because 1) i personally did not see how they were related to my major anyway, 2) i thought it was a waste for me to be taking them, seeing as how i already started taking my major classes and were acing them anyway, and 3) i considered them nothing but an exercise in brainless busy-work... which is why i got my first and only B-... in stats, which was surprising because i did crossword puzzles in class every day that i went to class and didn't know wtf i was doing on the final so i thought i'd get a C at least).

holy crap i just realized that my idea of "just a few years ago" is actually 8 years ago! dammit.

anyway, during those last two years of undergrad i had a lot of extra time. there weren't a whole lot of classes to take in my major area so i was taking a lot of language classes (japanese, hawaiian, spanish) and PE classes. those are both things i wish i had started doing earlier in life. i only started learning japanese in high school and i only started working out (seriously) in my first year of college. well, i guess i really had no reason to learn a foreign language (and if you don't use it, you'll forget everything so i guess it's okay that i really didn't take that up), but i wish that i had taken a earlier interest in fitness. i mean, as a kid my parents shoved me into every sport they could think of, i didn't really like any of them, but more for social reasons. i didn't like the mean-ness of competition. i didn't mind the physicality of it (although i hated being out in the sun in full baseball gear for sure), and i actually liked running and conditioning exercises, but socially i wasn't gonna be best buddies with my teammates (who were jerks, i assure you) and i thought all the coaches were grumpy old men. but, if it had started thinking about fitness earlier, like in high school, maybe i would've been a more confident and/or out-going person y'know? then again, it was high school and can you really consider ANY high schooler a socially appropriate person? probably not.

so it took me all the way until high school to figure out that i really liked tennis, and it took me until college to find weight training and surfing. one of the best decisions of my life was to take food science and human nutrition in my very first semester of college. it turned me on to proper nutrition and creating a lifestyle of eating right and exercising, and i embraced it fully. which, really when you think about it, is probably the way most things are right? in college you're finally out living on your own and you can choose what kind of life you want to lead. well, for two great years i lived that life. of course, i didn't have to worry about a mortgage or actually working for my money (thank you, bank of mom and dad), and thanks to my glorious brain (haha) i was able to spend pretty much all of my time outside of classes doing whatever the heck i wanted to. so for those last two years of college i had a great life plan:

alongside my regular classes (those which were required, which was really only 2-3 per sememster) i took language classes (i love learning languages) and PE classes. my language classes fit on MWFs and i put the PE classes in the morning on tuesdays and thursdays. forcing myself to wake up for a 7:30 or 8:30 tennis or volleyball class gave me the entire rest of the day free until my next class at 1:30, so after tennis i'd grab breakfast (chex used to make little breakfast mix packets, which is what started me thinking about all this because i just had chex mix for breakfast this morning), walk down kalakaua ave. to rainbow drive-inn, pick up a loco moco (it was only $2.00, then later $2.75) and eat it at waikiki beach, then take a mid-day nap on the sand and then go for a swim, a jog, or rent a board and go surfing if the waves were decent and the crowd was thin. then i'd walk back up to campus, grab a jamba juice along the way and brush the sand off my heels before my 1:30 class. how could it get any better than that? those were the healthiest years of my life, for sure.

so that's what i'm working towards. the weekends, vacations, retirement. all the elements for my ideal day off. sweet right? but today i am at work, and will have to wait until this weekend to do it again. still, i think those two years are just about the only two in my life that (if i could) i would live over again. sure, there are a lot of years that i wish i could DO OVER again (like all of high school), but only those two years i would like to live over again. but for now i'll have to settle for finding the little moments in between the rest of my life to fit the good stuff in.

anyway, eating my chex mix for breakfast this morning got me thinking about that. chex mix, loco moco, sun, sand, ocean, jamba juice, walking. all those things have just kinda grouped together in my brain making me remember that time in my life. sign, well, at least i have something to look forward to in retirement... or summertime at least!