March 21, 2008 12:11 PM
Starting Over
When I was a college student in my late teens and early twenties, I used to drive five hours back to my parents' house in South Florida for holidays and long weekends. Although my life was relatively happy in those days, it was also stressful, as the pressure of keeping up good grades, holding down a demanding internship, and searching for a job in a recession-riddled country faced me. In addition, my parents split in those years, and the bitter divorce added even more stress for all of us. On the long drives back home from college and my horrible, first post-college job in Georgia, I would pass the exits for tiny little beach towns, and wonder..."What would it be like to just exit here and start over? To just chuck it all and go somewhere new and start over?"
Of course, these were just fantasies--fleeting, unrealistic fantasies that I never planned to follow through with, even if I could have. But I think most people, at one time or another, have wished to just go somewhere new and start over fresh, minus the baggage that adulthood inevitably brings.
Those days more than 20 years ago came rushing back today when I read this article, Man Auctions His Life, on Reuters Oddly Enough site. It seems a bit extreme, but hey, it's his life. (But not for long...)
