20 year meme

[amw]

So, a couple weeks ago a bunch of y'all did the 20 year meme and it was great to see your old photos and get an idea of where you came from. It's a bit late, but here's my contribution. Sadly, there aren't as many photos as i hoped. I thought i had more photos scanned from back in these pre-digital times, but i can't find them. I will do more

Comments

[king_of_apathy]

Was fascinating to see where you were going back to way back when. Thanks for sharing. Now I feel very ready for 2.4 children and a white picket fence, but I think for a good chunk of my life I was like you are now, wanting nothing more than a backpack and a ticket to anywhere but here.

I often think back to where I was ten/five years ago etc, but I'm too lazy to do the full meme, so here's the short version.

20 years - 19, single and living with my family in Leicester and studying Biology at uni while working a mere four hours a week wiping tables at BHS's restaurant. I had a good bunch of friends from uni, my previous college and from the Jehovah's witness congregation, which I was still then very much a part off. It was my heyday for metal clubs and rock gigs.

15 years - 24, still single and back with the family in Leicester after a brief stint in London and Watford. Working pushing paper as a temp at the British Physiological Society. I was still a (somewhat uncertain) member of the JW congregation, but it wouldn't be long before i'd move down to London again and leave all that behind.

10 years - 29, married (happily, so I thought at the time) and living in Ealing, London with a couple of cats. Working making chemo meds and IV bags at a pharmaceutical company.

5 years - Very single, very free and having just embarked on my year long travels. Somewhere around Hampi, India.

Now - Living in our own apartment in Busan, Korea. Married with fish, a dog plus our niece and nephew living with us during the week, though having encountered a shit ton of angst due to being unable to have our own kids. Into my second year 'teaching' English at a hagwon (private school). Generally wandering how the fuck I got here!

[amw]

Thanks for sharing, even just the abridged version :)

It is interesting to look back and reflect on it given what you know now. I notice there are things that i experienced very differently in the time from how i remember them now. Especially when it comes to relationships, i do remember that in that moment i was madly in love, and i really believed that my life was all about being with that partner, they just made me so happy. Now i look back on some of those times and think i perhaps "wasted" a bit of those years, not because we weren't happy in the moment, but just because being with a partner did end up limiting the sorts of things i could've done on my own. Although, i suppose, they also broadened my mind in ways that i probably wouldn't have done on my own.

In the end, whatever the path you took, it still got you where you are now, so it's hard to imagine any of it being different. Change one thing, you wouldn't be the same person any more.

[king_of_apathy]

I often wonder at just how the smallest events, job interviews, chance meetings, chance messaging someone, led me of on such massive life changes that saw me getting married, divorced, moving through all different jobs and all over the world and ultimately to where I am now. I wouldn't be the same person... though sadly I don't think that's always a good thing. A different set of decisions and I think I'd be in a better situation, and be a better person, than I am now.

Anyways...reading your meme made me curious about your past life, so I went back ten years, read through some of the entries from when you were still married, and am now up to where you'd just moved back to Europe (Austria, Germany and Netherlands) to see family and start a new job. Reminded me of my few days in Berlin, where after an all night club, I got back to the hostel just in time to pack up and shower, and then with most of the day to kill and a few things to see on the way, walked all the way to the airport!

Curious that you always had a romantic image of the states but didn't like Australia or New Zealand much. I did a seven week road trip from San Francisco to Miami four years back (mostly by grey hound bus!) which I enjoyed but otherwise don't hold a special place in my heart for North America. I loved new Zealand though. I guess it all depends so much on who you were with and what happened to you while you were there.