So yesterday @SarahC0828 posted an entry titled ‘How old is your soul?’ This got me to thinking about exactly how old I feel deep down and how I’ve felt at different times of my life.

So up until high school I suppose my soul was the same age as my phsyical self. I read books and watched movies that were appropriate for my age, though there were some rated R(and um…higher) movies tossed in every once in a while. But yeah, when I look back on when I was 13 or 14, I think I felt 13 or 14. But high school was completely different for me. I was an outsider to every clique and never really understood why. I loved playing sports in gym class, but hated the people who played the actual high school team sports. So I wasn’t in the jock crowd. I had a brain, but used it to work on my imagination in the back of the classroom rather than pay attention in Algebra or Geometry class. So I wasn’t in the nerd crowd. I never joined any of the clubs or anything like that(ski club, spanish club etc) so I wasn’t part of those crowds. I was just in my own little world working on statistics for my favorite video games or counting down the hours until the next time I could go to Zapzone(Brad if you’re reading my page now this one was for you). I also went to a small religious high school, but at the time wasn’t too interested in following the religion, so I wasn’t part of the ‘God Squad’ as they were called. So I never really felt like an insider in high school. I was just there for four years and then left. My soul was that of someone not beneath high school(immature), in high school(15-18), or above high school(mature). I was just there and content to deal with what came my way day by day and just write in my diary/journal at night.

But during the summers it was a whole different story. I lived for the summers, and mainly because of Night Camp. It was only a week long and took place sometime during July. We(the campers and counselors) would stay up all night and then sleep during the day. I swear those days were the funnest of my life. Ah Camp Otterbein….
Anyways, when I was there I felt young. Not necessarily immature, but just young at heart. I felt like a kid in a candy store. Now I went to camp every summer for all 12 years of grade/middle/high school. Only the last four were night camp, but Camp Otterbein holds all my dearest memories. So I would say my soul was young while there.

Then college. I was never into the party scene and never lived on campus at Ohio State. The first couple years I lived at home to save money, but then in 2003 I moved to a house near the campus that housed like 14 guys(everyone had their own room, but the bathrooms were shared…ick). During my college days I suppose you could call me a mix between a vocational student as I worked on campus at a couple different places and a rebel student as I never really conformed to the structure of what a guidance counselor would have told me to. I never once met with a guidance counselor during the years at college. I just took the classes I thought looked interesting and, in the meantime, wrote about the girls who came and went during my time there. I still remember a girl named Molly from my Plant Biology class. Ah…she was cute. But without going to parties or partaking in the drinking scene and all of that, combine with living off campus at home and then the Neil Ave apartment(s), I just never felt like I was in college. I just felt like I was going from subject to subject and just enjoying the ride. So I suppose my soul was a little older than the party scene, but no old enough to know that if I was going to have a career that I needed to buckle down on one subject. Nevertheless I still advocate the rebel student as it got me where I am today. I’m happy despite not technically having earned a traditional four year degree. My soul is old enough to know that at least.

I could say a whole lot more about the years after college ended(which some of you who know me can guess at I suppose), but i won’t. At least not right now. Suffice it to say that my soul aged quite a bit over the past five years and I’m now what I would call a veteran at my various…um…ailments.

So thank you to Sarah for inspiring this post. Go check hers out too. But before you go feel free to answer this one question: How old is your soul?