(no subject)

[prog]

May 1 means that somewhere around now is the ten-year anniversary of my graduating from the University of Maine with BAs in English and Journalism.

Being a solitary sort, and living outside of a real city (Bangor being made mostly of particle board and broken dreams etc.), upon receiving my diploma I immediately lost touch with all of my classmates, most of whom immediately scattered across the country in search of their futures. I stayed in town and worked retail for a while before a chance meeting with a UMaine acquaintance gave me my first technical job. But he turned out to be kind of hard to work for, and the job of varying goodness. Later, two years after my graduation, kyroraz became the first fellow UMaine alum to reconnect with me by inviting me into a D&D group, which led to my introduction to daerr, and from there to my first programming job.

I blogged a few years ago about almost setting up a meeting with dear Katie, my Maine Campus editor-in-chief back in the day. I successfully pinged her at the start of this decade, after I moved to Boston and found where she was working, at a PR firm downtown... but she's slipped off the radar since then. Her managing editor and our good friend Chris found his way onto my IM buddy list only a few months ago, contacting me from out of the blue. Since I last saw him, he has married his then-girlfriend and they bought a house and have just baked up their fourth(!) kid and so on, all of these things so alien to me and my accurséd cave-dwelling kind.

There's also Daphne, a writer at the paper whose name I came across in an IF newsgroup a couple of years ago. We traded email briefly and then I just let it slide off, as I do, cuz I stink.

I don't remember the names of any of my classmates outside of the newspaper, though I remember some students namelessly. I am moved to tell you about one of the most regretful events from this time was my running into another recent graduate with whom I was reasonably friendly with in class but didn't necessarily know very well. Unbidden, she handed me a scrap of paper with her number. She was beautiful and smart, but I was so completely unversed in such matters that I didn't know what I was supposed to do with it. I mean: yes, one day not long after this I called her on the phone, but I didn't quite realize that I was expected to suggest anything or even bring up any topic in particular, and after several minutes of idle chit-chat she lost patience and politely bid me farewell. I never called back.

I was actually laughing while typing the previous. I don't think I've ever thought about this incident directly. It's pretty funny.

I have done a hella lot in ten years, my five in Maine and my five in Mass., but I can't v. well say that I'm satisfied, not with the position I've put myself in lately.

Comments

Re: Suggestion?

[prog.livejournal.com]

Well, I lived on the south shore (Hingham & Cohasset) from birth through junior high, so I'm a sorta-native too.

There are exactly two people on my flist who I know for sure to have grown up in Massachusetts.