I recently got a message through MySpace from an old friend. It was nice. Amy and I were pretty close when we were younger, 6th-9th grade maybe? It just brought me back to a time in life when things weren’t so complicated…

Not that things are real complicated right now I suppose, but looking back 15 years ago… haha… its ridiculous the things that were important. I guess it’s a sense of responsibility now that causes stress, anxiety and the like. Taxes, bills, cars and other “things.” Things really shouldn’t be a burden. Why do we NEED things, really? I know it’s easy to say we don’t need anything, but as soon as that Magic Bullet commercial comes on, our fingers start dialin’… maybe that’s only me and my sister. You get the idea…

There’s a stream of genius marketing around now that I don’t think was here 10+ years ago. Ads making us believe that we truly “need” this item… that without it, our lives won’t be the same… that we just aren’t up to par unless we have it. I could be wrong, but it seems like old advertising more or less simply told us about a product, instead of actually selling it. I’m sure there are exceptions… this is all based on a very skewed memory. ;)

What am I talking about again?

I was talking about worries of a teenager compared to now, and all of a sudden I’m posting a picture of a 1940’s Coke ad. Whoa. And I’ll get to this post’s title in a moment…

In 2004, I had, what was to me, a very stressful year. I went through some things that only 2 or 3 people know about that really affected me… things that I’m glad I’ll only have to go through once. In the same vein as my last post, these things were as deep as feeling like I had no purpose in life anymore, to leaving my girlfriend at the time in California to move back to Wisconsin. Scary stuff really, if you compare it to things like “does this girl like me” or making sure you have cool jeans on.

Let’s go back… at 3 years old, a kid can have just as much fun with a $100 remote controlled car as he can digging in the dirt with a $2 plastic shovel. Every time I ask Heather’s son what he did today, he says, “Played.” Yet he has nightmares… how can a kid who plays all day without a care in the world have nightmares? He’s sensitive and, I suppose, worries about his mother’s wellbeing… but I’m sticking to my guns in saying it’s because of these frickin Baby Einstein videos… freaky.

Ok, you start school at 4, 5, 6 years old… and making friends and getting along with others seems to be the big thing. I don’t think it’s until middle school that the actual peer pressure kicks in full blast.

Then you have the relationships which are a huge cause of teenage stress, school work gets harder, getting into college, forging those new relationships, and then making money comes along somewhere… no longer as a way to have spending cash, but as a way to support your life.

Where did that $2 shovel go? Is there legitimately something “cheap” that I can do now that I would appreciate as much as anything that cost a bunch of money? I enjoy sitting and watching a good TV show… in my $X apartment watching my over-priced cable… hmmm… I like high-priced meals and fancy restaurants… I like valets, shiny watches, and matching my shoes to my hat… I like having my car cleaned every Saturday morning - by someone other than myself… I like my $600 PDA that’s collecting dust on my desk… I liked my $500 corner desk that I took a hatchet too before I moved back from L.A…. I like my mp3 player and my Sirius radio (the gift that keeps on taking… ;)

But, I also love the sound of walking on fresh snow and walking through leaves in the fall… I like the smell of fresh-cut grass, the sound of anyone in my family at the other end of a phone call… I like anticipating - anything really… I like remembering good and bad times and thinking about how they lead to today…

Are these intangible things my $2 shovel? For me as a kid, it was a matchbox… I could take a matchbox and do frickin anything. It’s amazing when I think about it… Maybe our imagination fades? I think of myself as a creative person still, but know for a fact I wouldn’t have much fun with a matchbox tonight after work. I need to find my shovel…

Where’s yours?