Sometimes when I’m in the shower or futzing around in the morning getting ready for work, I think that this is not my life as I imagined it to be.  I had always thought it would turn out differently — though I obviously did not take the steps necessary to get it there.  So here’s how I saw it going.

After graduating from college, I thought I was going to get a Master’s in Journalism from Columbia University.  I have always wanted to write newspaper articles and go to Columbia in Manhattan, but I did neither.

After graduation, I imagined I would get a job - as the token black person, of course - at a major metropolitan newspaper covering the crime beat or some other undesirable beat.

I planned to have some profound experience that would lead to my first non-fiction book.  That non-fiction book would lead to a better job at a better paper, and possibly to my own column - as the sole black columnist (because every paper has one, intermittently) - making all the points I love to make and getting paid to do it.

After ten or fifteen years I would get weary of the daily grind of the eroding world of newspapers and I would then quit my job supporting myself freelancing while working on the great American novel.  It would sell enough copies to keep me living modestly - and well, I didn’t plan past that.

So here I am, almost fifteen years out of college never having done any of those things and feeling too damn old to start yet another career.  It’s disconcerting to be living one life when you planned to live another.   Going to law school, digging myself out of debt, and having the most boring job/career possible were not in my vocabulary when I was twenty.  I often wonder what twenty-one year old me would think of thirty-six year old me.