Today I wrote out a check, as I do every month, to Macalester College, my alma mater. I have occasionally unworthy thoughts about the amount of money involved, but I squelch them, because college is part of what made me what I am, and other than losing a few pounds and maybe developing the ability to shoot lasers from my eyes, I would not be other than as I am.

I am pretty bad about bills–not about paying them, per se, which I do with surprising regularity for an artist, and I have kept faith with my student loan through thick and thin–but with keeping track of how much I owe. So this was the first time I’d glanced at my student loan info in awhile, and discovered, quite to my astonishment, that I am at exactly the halfway point in paying it off. Fifty-six hundred down, fifty-six hundred to go. Another five years, if I don’t throw some more money at it in the meantime.

In five years I’ll be thirty-two. I know that five years is very little time, and yet five years ago, I was still working at Prudential Insurance reading fraud claims, James was slaving over Myth II maps, and this was the best painting I’d ever done. And that seems like a thousand years ago, give or take. So I wonder if the next five will see as much change, or if I’ll look back and go “Dude. That was a whole five? No way.”

Sorry. Maudlin PMS this month. You know how it is.

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