My buddy Potter from high school (right) came and visited me this past week. (This photo is from our high school graduation - this was a rather anti-climatic experience as I had already gone through my freshman year of college - I walked with my class at the request of my parents). I had a great time catching up with him; he's probably one of the people who knew me from my really weird and awkward phase.

I don't keep in touch with him often (last time I actually spoke to him was his SD visit back in March), but it's always easy to pick things back up. I think what helps keep that connection is the fact that we both (more or less) ended up doing what we expected coming out in high school. We are both in careers we feel very passionate about (he's interviewing for orthopedic surgery residency programs), and we both work our asses off. While our lives are completely opposite, I think that shared passion towards our careers is something we both relate to quite well.

What struck me as I talked to him was how long we had both been going down our individual paths, and how long it took us to get there. It's been seven years since that photo, and I still feel like I'm only starting to get traction in my career. He's still got another five years of residency left! And we still got a boatload of work left at MindTouch to get to a place where we can really say we're a successful company.

It took us this long to get to where we are today - that's having the benefit of knowing what we wanted, and working our asses off towards that goal. Seven years! Seven years never seemed so short, yet so long. Makes me wonder how I'll grow over the next seven years. Or what'll change.

A scanned polaroid of Potter as he left yesterday (He's posing with my Christmas tree and my Lenin poster):

. . .

I've been listening to Akon's new album, "Freedom" all day - it's pretty great.