mrph | "And you may ask yourself - Well...How did I get here?"

From

About 20 years ago I was 9 3/4 and:
1. Living just outside Southampton and attending a small but horrid private school.
2. Planning to be a palaeontologist when I grew up.
3. Playing rugby every afternoon, whatever the weather, because that was the school games policy (they also had a "no underwear allowed" policy, although that may well be TMI). I hate playing rugby. This is why.
4. Suspended from English lessons and copying out pages from David Copperfield every day, until I could learn to write "with the correct hand". I really despised that school, you know...

About 15 years ago I was 14 and:
1. Studying for my maths O-level, but not bothering to study very hard at all.
2. Listening to the likes of T'Pau, Duran Duran and the odd bit of Iron Maiden and AC/DC. I was a strange child.
3. Understudy and sidekick to the class clown.
4. A cocky (if not terribly happy) brat who was convinced he was at least as smart as anyone he knew.

About 10 years ago I was 19 and:
1. A nervously hyperactive student, recovering from a truly appalling set of A-levels and taking a Computer Studies HND at Coventry Polytechnic (where I met paulw, mhw and other crazy people).
2. Spending far too much time on Usenet. Vaguely lurking on soc.bi and alt.gothic.
3. Fast losing all interest in programming, not at all bothered whether or not I passed the course (LPMUD and Empire were more interesting) and not looking forward to the 9-to-5 job hell.
4. Living in Coventry's bizarre 'Mount Nod' area, along with a very odd landlady, an invisible landlord and a small mad jack russell.

About 5 years ago I was 24 and:
1. Working in a Production Engineering department, because I didn't quite fit anywhere else within the company, looking after the user-side maintenance of the company MIS.
2. Living in my own house and being an evil landlord with a lodger who was mostly drunk.
3. Falling head over heels for entirely the wrong person. Ooops.
4. In the middle of a very major (and utterly confusing) falling out with two of my best friends. I never did work out what was actually going on there...

About 2 years ago I was 27 and:
1. Convinced that life was about to change for the better. As it happens, I was wrong.
2. Owner of a daft, lazy, clumsy and absolutely adorable cat. I still miss her. :-(
3. A vegetarian.
4. Planning my first trip abroad since my schooldays, and a bit worried by the idea...

Now I am:
1. Still living in my own house in Coventry, now without a lodger or a cat.
2. About to be unemployed.
3. Happy, with more self-confidence than I've had in a very long time.
4. Spending far too much time on LJ.