As of time of writing, I’m one hour and twenty minutes from being twenty years old. Something I thought I’d been looking forward to for a long time. However, such wasn’t the case for the last few days. I’ve spent a good portion of the last few days overviewing my life to this point. Twenty years old is a significant milestone, which, for some reason triggered something in my brain to cause a critical review of the last ten years, which, ultimately led to two fears. (GIANT Comma splice/run-on sentence there but I’m already over it. I’ve got bigger problems)
My first fear is that I’m turning twenty! This is the end of my teenage years, the end of an era (as I’ve been saying all day)! There’s a preconceived notion in society today that teenagers are inherently irresponsible; for the most part, I agree. It’s an interesting time in your life, especially in this day and age! You’re growing up, you’re graduating high school, you’re getting girl friends, you’re going to college, you’re partying, whatever you’re doing, chances are there’s some element of irresponsibility. Society accepts that level of irresponsibility. My initial feeling is that in one hour and nine minutes, society is going to take that acceptance away from me and in those 4,140 seconds between now and midnight, I’m supposed to all the sudden start acting like a responsible adult. My under-developed frontal cortex is screaming at me “but I don’t wanna!” but yet my under-developed frontal cortex doesn’t have the power to stop time.
My second fear is that I’m turning twenty! People that know me will tell you that I work hard. People that are close to me will tell you that I work really hard, and play hard. I will tell you that I feel like I work my ass off; I’m the only person who knows how stressful it is to be Christopher Struttmann. Please don’t mistake me, I’m definitely NOT trying to start a pity-party, I’m not that person. I DO want to impress upon everyone that I work extremely hard. I’ve spent the last three years of my life working as a hard-core student and a hard-core software developer. But I’m still turning 20; I’m entering a new phase in my life yet I don’t have too much to show for all the hard work I did in the last phase. People say to me, “Well Chris, relatively speaking, you’re nineteen and you’re wildly successful for your age.” And yes, it’s true, I do sit in on a 3-way partnership of a company that without a doubt is going to change the world one way or another (believe me, we’re DETERMINED). Yes, I have created some spectacular software that is being used in all sorts of fields of industry. And yes, I do own another company that inked it’s first business deal only a week and a half after incorporating. Yet, as of this moment, exactly fifty minutes before I’m twenty years old, I don’t have a whole lot to prove it all! It’s mostly vapor! Right now, you’re probably saying “well, why in the world do you feel like you have to prove yourself?” and I say, I don’t… but it’d be really awesome if I could!
So that’s what I’m going to spend the next few years doing! I can’t stop time, so it’s ridiculous to spend time working myself up over the first fear, so I’m not going to. However, I can do something about the second one. Not only am I going to continue doing the awesome things that I do, I’m going to turn that vapor into tangible success. Not tangible in terms of me tooling around in a Porsche, but in the terms of me being able to point to something MASSIVE and saying, “Chris Struttmann.” I’m going to make sure that everyone, and I do mean everyone, knows that I’m Christopher Edward Struttmann, and I’m here to put a giant dent in the world!
It is now 25 minutes until the start of a new era.
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