I felt the compelling need to be productive today, which is a rare occurrence and I can assume it is the result of going out Thursday night and getting absolutely nothing worthwhile accomplished on Friday. I recently just renewed my lease here in Charlotte for a second year, so I figured it was about time to unpack some of the boxes that have been sitting in the exact same spot in my closet since moving in a year ago.
I open the first box, and inside I find my old laptop from undergrad and a few books from my second to last semester at Witt. This might be a record for procrastination; I got a newer laptop just before I graduated, and packed this box up sometime in April or May of 2008, and the box has sat, unopened throughout grad school at Ohio State, and then traveled with me to Charlotte, where it sat, unopened, though almost my first full year at PwC.
My curiosity was peaked, I wondered what was on the old laptop – so I dug around for the AC adapter and turned it on. To my surprise, 20 minutes later (it was a really crappy laptop then and now…) it awoke from a 2+ year hibernation to a snapshot of my life from a few years ago.
I was looking at a window into the past, everything was exactly as I left it before getting completely frustrated with the computer, and sending it into hibernation before going to Best Buy to get a new one that wouldn’t freeze every 5 minutes.
I found old spreadsheets open from my last accounting class at Wittenberg, which looking back, were pretty badly put together considering I spend half of my workday creating excel spreadsheets now. As bad as they were, the work was still good enough for an A+ in the class (no one else ever did the assignments, I set the curve with very little effort)
I also had a window open from thinkgeek.com for their Annoy-a-tron. I eventually got one and had some real fun with this little piece of evil 
. The Annoy-a-tron is a small device powered by a watch battery which creates a very irritating, high pitched beep at random times. All the user has to do is set it somewhere inconspicuous, and let the fun begin. Within a few hours, the victim will freak out looking for the noise, but because it beeps at random times, it is very difficult to locate. Good memories.
I also found a AIM instant messenger chat window open from a girl I dated for a short period of time. She was telling me what an asshole I was for doing the homework in the accounting class and how it would affect her grade. I guess I still liked her then, so I didn’t realize it at time, but looking at the conversation today made me realize what a bad situation that was, and how much better my life became when I finally swore to never speak to her again.
There was also a Firefox window open with a classified ad for a Cirrus SR22, which is a beautiful airplane that I desperately wanted to fly. I still hadn’t finished my private pilot’s license at that point, but I still swore I would one day have one of my own. I’m still working on that, but at least since then, I have flown an SR22 along with a number of other fun airplanes, I’ve achieved my dreams of flying through the mountains, flown to the beach for lunch, and enjoyed all the freedom to go where I want, when I want.
I wasted a golden opportunity to be productive today, but I got to take a look back in time and realize how much has changed in just a few years. I put the computer back in hibernation, put it back in the box, and will likely forget about it again for another few years until I stumble across it once more and think about where I was, where I am, and where I will be.