Posthip

DID YOU KNOW? If you angle your side mirrors way out, much farther than you think you should, you can see any car in the lane right next to you using just, in this order, your rear view mirror, your side mirror and your peripheral vision. It’s nice.

The thing is, it’s completely disorienting for the first couple of weeks. You can’t see the side of your own car in the side mirror thus your reference point is completely gone. Like anything else, you have to get used to it. And now I can change lanes with confidence, without craning my neck, and I have no fear that there is a little car lurking beside me, just out of view.

Still, though I believe that this is a much more effective position for my mirrors, I do kind of miss seeing the side of my car. I’ve been seeing the side of my car in the mirror for 15 years and now I don’t. It can still be disorienting, this different, better way. Adjusting to different, better ways of doing things is not easy. Living alone, succeeding instead of failing, seeing possibilities instead of seeing limitations, these aren’t the comfortable shoes I’m used to. I wasn’t raised for success, I was raised for survival, and I defeat myself constantly with bad decisions and ridiculous behavior so that I can make it by from day to day, but just barely.

I haven’t always known this– I think I’m only recently coming into the full realization that the poverty and ignorance that shaped me as a child has dulled my view of the world. I’ve made (or lucked into) a pretty good life as it is. Not everyone in my generation can say they’re more successful (if you don’t count having kids and shit like that) than their parents. But still, I can see the things I’ve wasted, the wholly avoidable traps I’ve set and set off, and how that has impeded my development and held me back. I know I could have done more, and I guess I still can. I’ve always been a late bloomer, so maybe it’s just taken me a little longer to come into my own. But I feel like I’m there, or just about there, and maybe my Big Pile of Unfinished Projects will start getting smaller sometime soon. I mean, Jesus, I’ve got an entire area of my home dedicated to it– surely I can get something done. Ah, who am I kidding? It’s probably too late to change.

(Originally posted August 15, 2005)