I've never been known to do things in the normal way - I have plenty of references - but lately I've been considering how most people's lives seem to follow a trend. For example, someone who grows up doing farming may wish to get into computer technology with hopes and aspirations of forever cleaning the soil out from under their fingers.

I'm doing the opposite.

People from a developing country leave to countries like the United States in the hope of bettering themselves and living in the lands of Milk and Honey.

I did the opposite.

People look at me funny sometimes. I can leave whenever I want, and they believe that everything is better elsewhere - but then they haven't had the life experience that teaches the lesson of problems not being solved by geographic solutions. There are people all over the world who have a mental picture of travel and educational brochures and who strive toward these goals... and I wonder sometimes how many of them will get to where they wanted to be and find it to be a place unlike that which they expected. Sort of like when I chose Hawaii over Italy while in the Navy, and a few months later running in full gear on the beach. This wasn't in the brochure, Captain...

I wonder how many people expect things out of life that have been inflated by advertising and word of mouth. Maybe it is every parent's hope that their children should do better than they have - it should be. But how many parents tell their children that the grass is greener on the other side without having ever visited that other side?

When I was less than half my age - a phrase that indicates I am becoming older - I thought returning to the United States would fulfill all my dreams. And it did. But my dreams were empty. At age 17 I had reached my goal of becoming a paid computer programmer. Where do you go from there? I can tell you, but it would take a very long time and would be more fun for you to read than it would be for me to write, all the dirty details of my fun and interesting past during the lost years that were more formative than the years before and after.

And still, I find that I am swimming upstream when it comes to the direction of those around me. Does a salmon ever ask itself why it's swimming upstream?