There is a caveat to this prize:  I must share seven things about myself to the person who presented me with this award.  Well, not being the shy type, I thought I might as well pour my heart and soul out to everyone unlucky enough to voluntarily read this dreck of a blog…so let’s go!

1. I enjoy eating cottage cheese with sugar
2. I learned how to spell ‘encyclopedia’ when I was seven years old because I was promised $5 to do so
3. When I was a child I jumped from the roof of my elementary school and into an open trash bin like a stuntman (to this day I’m grateful that it wasn’t “recycle your glass” day)
4. I love peeling my skin after a sunburn
5. I much prefer to stay up late than get up early
6. I used to be big into silk screen artwork (making posters for local bands), and hope to pick it up again someday
7. I sorely miss my days in the Air Force

There.  Whew!  That wasn’t so bad, now was it?  Heh…

And again, Nicole, many thanks for the award!  You’re an amazing blogger.  Everyone here should immediately add your blog to their blogrolls, if they know what’s good for ‘em.

At any given time I can look in my wallet and find no less than ten receipts from various stores.  In my car I have a vast assortment of long-ignored pennies.  My desk drawers at work contain mini mountains of scribbled notes that consisting of information so vital to me that I locked them away only to forget that they ever existed.  On my pantry shelves are stacks of tinned food missing their labels that I’m afraid to open.  My closet is stacked high with old computer parts, Christmas gifts still in their packages, and manuals to electronics that I don’t recall ever owning.  And in my bathroom medicine cabinet are expired medications, Band-Aids whose paper wrappings have yellowed with age, and that half-filled mini-bottle of mouthwash that’s desperate to be put out of its misery.

All of these things, and more, surround me.  They’re all small.  Insignificant.  After all, they’re just coins, scraps of paper, and tiny pills.  They normally thrive in the void where ignored things live, happy in the fact that they exist at all.  And I’m guilty of living the lie that my life is orderly.  Neat.  Uncluttered.

That is, until I investigate my wallet to see why it’s so darned fat, only to pull out receipts so old that the ink on them has faded.

Then I get to thinking about all of those little things that take up space.

The kitchen spices so old that they’ve frozen into columns of concrete inside their containers. The magazines secreted away under the coffee table.  The junk drawer whose depths haven’t been plumbed in years.

All of these things have turned me into an unintentional collector of the mundane.  An accruer of the banal.

These placeholders…these unnecessary watermarks of a life in motion must be purged.  Starting today.

First things first.  Let’s clean out that wallet…

You see, after today, I’m going to be a multi-millionaire.

I can feel it in my bones.  Today is my lucky day.  So certain am I of my future fortune that I’ve quit my job, put a down payment on Dick Clark’s old digs, placed a bet in Vegas for the Padres to go all the way to the World Series this year, rented out a suite at the MGM Grande for a week, bought a boat and named it “The Doorman Hates Volkswagens”, and filled my pool with strawberry JELL-O….because that’s what millionaires are supposed to do, right?

And so, when you don’t see a new post from me Monday morning, you can be sure that I’ll be chillin’ down in Rio, sippin’ mimosas and indulging in budinos.

Because….ya know, I’m going to win.  My fortune cookie promised.

“I dunno,” was my reply. What did I know? I was just a kid. How could I possibly know what I wanted to do with my life at such a young age? I specifically remember the very question as sounding odd and contrite. My world at the time revolved around cartoons, seeing if my friends could come out to play, and riding my bike around the neighborhood. What I wanted to do when I grew up was the furthest thing from my mind at the time.

When I entered high school we were asked to take a test that was supposed to reveal our personalities, what our talents were, and what future professions would best suit us. My test revealed that I was a highly functional malcontent with an artistic bent. My future profession would most likely be an artist, actor, or (surprisingly) accountant.

Although I agreed with the first two conclusions, neither teacher, actor, nor accountant sounded appealing to me.

In short, I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life when I grew up.

I started college with no idea of what to study. After two years of floundering around from class to class, subject to subject, with no professional field really calling out to me, I decided to join the military. After four years of the Air Force, I knew that it just wasn’t the best fit for me (but it’s an experience I’ll always treasure).

With my four-year contact with the military over, I left and completed college with a BS in Information Systems (thanks to the military for introducing me to computers) and landed a great job in the tech industry, in which I do quite well in to this very day, and it’s a job that I actually enjoy.

But I still don’t know what I really want to do with my life.

It’s as if I’ve been wandering along a nebulous path whose very makeup seems to materialize underneath my shadow mere moments before I set my foot down upon it. I never really had an ultimate goal in life. I never had a singular desire to be rich or famous, amass power and wealth, or make a lasting dent in the world. Luckily I was always smart, stuck with problems until they were solved, and never fell into the easy trap of sloughing off responsibility.

Seemingly without trying I obtained a modicum of success.

I married a wonderful woman who’s clearly my better half. We bought a house. We had a son.

I accomplished all of this without a real game plan.  It’s funny what life gives you.

What do I want to do when I grow up?

Honestly, I still don’t know.  I guess I’ll just see how far this ride takes me.