I've been smiling at babies more often lately. And dogs. When I drive along roads, I notice the houses a little more than I did in the past. On the weekends, I see people at the stores, buying things to fix and decorate those houses.

I think about the people living in their own houses, how they were all at my current stage of life at some point. They make me feel as if life for me is already half over. I don't have a house of my own yet. If I spend the next couple years working to earn money to buy one, and I spend the next 40 afterwards working to earn money to fix it up, decorate it, and fill it up with junk and loved ones, by the time I'm all through, my life will be just about over... won't it? And time will have passed so quickly... as it has during the first half of my life.

Is that how I want to spend the next half of my life? Working to purchase a jail cell of my preferred dimensions and location, and spending all that I subsequently earn and all of my free time developing the inside, so that I can live out the last few years of my life within the comfort of its bars? That's what it seems like most people are doing or have done. I'm not sure that's what I want to do... It just doesn't seem like enough of a life.