Things Other People Accomplished when they were my age...

If you are running short of things to write in your next birthday card, try this.

By my age in years, other people had already accomplished scores of the following things...

1. Ernest Hemingway published his first novel, The Sun Also Rises.
2. Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly alone across the Atlantic, thus winning a $25,000 prize.
3. By this age, Charles Chaplin had appeared in 35 films.
4. Dr. Ludwig Zamenhof of Warsaw invented the artificial language Esperanto.
5. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. dropped out from his job at General Electric to become a full-time writer.
6. Sarah Bernhardt scored her first triumph, being asked to repeat her theatrical performance before Napoleon III.
7. Albert Einstein published five major research papers in a German physics jornal, fundamentally changing man's view of the universe and leading to such inventions as television and the atomic bomb.
8. Benjamin Franklin published the first edition of Poor Richard's Almanac, which was to play a large role in molding the diverse American character.
9. College dropout Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer.
10. Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Italy.

So you see, it could potentially, with some measure of imagination, be really inspiring as the blog account might have it. Either the next few years of your life are the defining moments of your life, or it falls into becoming just another one of those humdrum times.

Too bad for me that I mark the passage of my time and my life with people. I don't think I'm the only one either. Too many of us have our lives and times defined by the people we meet, or the people that we date. From the people we hang out with, to the people we're in love with at the time. Too many times, I've heard, "No, it must have been at least xx years because I was still with so-and-so at the time." I do that too, but strange how pathetic that seems at the moment. Only one phrase is coming to mind at this time, from Avenue Q... "there is a fine, fine line. Between love, and a waste of time." And it's making me laugh.