4 Azamat 166 B.E. (Baha'i Calendar)
Soundtrack in my head: Bebel Gilberto, "So Nice"

Living further away from the college campus, and not having been a student in decades, one would think that I would somehow have escaped any sort of contact with the whole graduation thing. No siree, not this year. Though it's fitting--it's been twenty years since I graduated from college.

I attended a friend's graduation party over the weekend. I ate entirely too much food, resisted the temptation of a keg of New Glarus Spotted Cow (my favorite beer when I actually still drank) and found myself in a little reunion with current and past co-opers that I knew.

Two of the bloggers I follow are also donning the cap and gown. I find both of their blogs fascinating--probably because they reveal a lot about themselves. They get me thinking about my own style of blogging--I wouldn't want to totally emulate their style but there's things I can learn from them. They are more expressive of their feelings, and I have this annoying tendency to be a bit too heady and intellectual in this blog. While that's something I want to change, I give my readers permission to call for the men with the giant butterly nets if I start to yell "Squeeee!"

I appreciate the huge change these graduates are going through. Twenty years ago this month, I learned that I was hired as one of the organizers of the Global Walk for a Livable World. During finals week, no less. At the end of the same month, I boarded a bus that took me out to Newport Beach, CA, and my new life and an incredible number of adventures began.

I'm revisiting those same years in a treatise I started which I mentioned in my last posting. I'm getting back in touch with what I was feeling then, what was motivating me, and to what extent and in what way those things are relevant to me today.

So I confess to living a little bit vicariously through the college graduates this year. It's a good opportunity to reflect on where I was then, and where I am now.