constance | My odd talents are exactly suited to this sort of thing.

Lately, in the face of my impending 20th-year high school reunion -- I'm not attending, but it's lurking out there in a surprisingly loomy sort of way, this spring -- I've been googling old friends, discovering their present lives as they're lived on the internet. The results are as interesting and as diverse as you'd expect: we are now doctors and lawyers and rehab counselors and professors and insurance salesmen and yoga instructors (boy, was that a surprise) and jewelry designers and bankers and priests (a surprise but not, if you know what I mean) and of course HR/IT managers, and we're married or single or divorced and have five children or are childless, and no doubt we all have secrets and perversions not hinted at in a little google blurb or a couple of links. No doubt. I've got a few of my own, after all. Don't we all?

I began this little googling spree after hearing from an old friend in January whose adult life has been a significant struggle up to now but has seemed to smooth out lately in a most satisfying way. I'm happy for her, and I'm happy for all of us, those of us who've made it this far without sinking, because we are halfway through and that, I think, is an accomplishment all by itself. And also: I'm happy for me.

It took me a long time to realize it, mind, over the past couple of months, as I sneaked up on some real success stories. I mean, where am I? I'm no doctor, no lawyer, no priest, no entertainment executive. I'm not writing speeches or working in policy-setting think tanks or raising consciousness and dollars for medical afflictions. I'm not making the world a better place in any but the most insignificant ways. I have left no real imprint on the internet, even -- if you googled my name, you'd see one little letter posted to an online magazine, and that's pretty much it -- and I'll go so far as to say that in realizing my early potential, I've fallen a little short. (It's not exactly a stretch to say that.) But. Even so. I feel pretty good about the compromises I've made. I'm pleased to be here, despite all my neuroses and imperfections, home from my sadly unremunerative job, in my ridiculous hot-pink-and-black pajama bottoms, sipping spearmint water, writing this post for this blog, whose readers are people I like and respect and in some cases genuinely love. And I want to document this feeling, so that next time I'm feeling inadequate, I can reread and remember: Hey, now, I'm not so bad after all.

A while back,

laurelwood-who-hasn't-been-around-so-much-lately-and-is-much-missed wrote a post challenging us to come up with ten things we liked about our bodies, no apologies, no modesty, no qualifications or equivocations. And I'm issuing a similar challenge tonight, in honor of National Women's History Month: come up with ten things you like about the person you've become, ten things you want people to judge you by. No apologies, no modesty, no qualifications or equivocations. Come on, it'll be good for you.

I'm imaginative. I can keep up with a six-year-old, and I can come up with unexpected and workable solutions in a pinch.

I've never lost my senses of delight, wonder, and curiosity. It's a difficult job to be these things, in the world, without being naive or Pollyannaish. And I feel that I've done well at it.

I'm well-read. I haven't read everything, and I don't claim to've. But I've read more than many of my English-professor acquaintance, and hey! I can even talk about the books I've read without sounding like a moron.

I'm loyal. Man, if you get me close, you get me for life; it's kind of hard to shake me loose. I've said it before: I love what I love hard, and forever.

I've achieved my most treasured long-term goal. And I did it before the age of forty. And I did it in exactly the way I wanted to do it.

I am good at seeing people, things, situations, as they really are, and appreciating them without wanting more. That doesn't mean that I don't recognize room for improvement. Just that I can enjoy them without wanting to fix them, and without being disappointed in them.

I'm a good listener. I can hear people's stories without judgment, without interruption, without waiting for the first space to interject my own thoughts and opinions.

I generally understand how things fit together. Mechanically, I mean. I have rewired lamps and designed and built a planter/fence. I replaced my toilet tank, remember? :D

I work in a place which I like pretty much without reservation, and which I trust to like me back. You'll have to pry it, I hope, out of my cold, dead hands.

After a long time, I am finally learning to stand up for myself and the things I believe in. I'll never be comfortable standing on the front lines, and I doubt I'll ever be up to fist-shaking for fist-shaking's sake, but I am less and less afraid to speak out, now. Less and less nervous about being different, wanting different things from life than other people want, disagreeing.

I remember running into a former teacher a few years ago. In catching up on each other's lives, I told her about my life, of course. At the time I was working at a bookstore, living with a roommate, spending most of my meager income on books and pets and dinners out, and I was a little embarrassed about admitting to my small ambitions, but she gave me a tight hug and said, "I'm so glad you're not living the same life that everyone else is living. It makes me hopeful." I am feeling, tonight, that I am closer to the center than I was then, but still holding steady, still living the life I want, still living up to her hopefulness.

Happy twentieth reunion to me, man. It took a long time to get here.