Things were much simpler when we were young. When I reflect back on my youth, I can not remember worrying as much about the daily grind. I loved school and was always happy to be there. I can clearly recall that I liked all of my classes, with the exception of gym class. I was not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. While I enjoyed all my courses, I did have favorites. I liked Physics and Chemistry a lot. I was also very fond of my AP American History class. To round out the list of favorites were my communication classes.

Our high school was divided into “magnets,” specialized schools within the main campus. For example, they had the Communication Arts, BioScience, and Business magnets. I was in the Communication Arts magnet. The primary goal of this magnet was to prepare a student to pursue some form of written or broadcast journalism in college. I loved being a part of this program. Our class’s greatest accomplishment was resurrecting the defunct student newspaper. We created a bi-weekly newspaper that we wrote, edited, published, and circulated. At one point, I was Editor-In-Chief and Lead Reporter. I also had an editorial column with my close friend Nick called “Point, Counter-Point.” You can probably guess it was each of us debating opposite sides of an issue.

Those were the days. I loved to learn, loved to teach, love, and explain things to people. I had a real passion for being in school and around others that liked school. I was driven to know and understand the world around me. However, everything went sideways when I left high school and tried my hand at college. I ended up not being able to stay in college due to finances, dropped out, and worked through several entry-level jobs. Finally, I landed a job at Xerox, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The point of all this is that today I am trying to rekindle that passion from days long ago, and finding out that now that I am 48 and not 18, it is not as easy as it was. I like to write, but life makes it difficult sometimes. I still have a smoldering ember of passion for teaching people something, anything, this helpful. Finally, I still love to learn. This all sounds so good until you try to put plans in place when you’re life is so radically different than it was back then. It is not that it can’t be done; I get the feeling it’s just going to take more work than it would have back then. So the question becomes, am I up for the challenge?