Not to belabor a point, but a month ago I really, seriously thought my life might have been shortened. I looked back over the course of my life so far, the shape of it in hindsight, and the direction the arrow is facing for the future, and I felt lucky. It was almost as if I could see through a rip in time to my sixteen year-old self, to look back and see that this is where I've come in fifteen years. I felt almost like I did when I was eight and learned that I could shoplift candy bars from the grocery store. My brother is a doctor with a house on a hill, a German automobile, and a rice cooker imported from Japan. A few years ago I was living on $300 a week, working an entry-level job at a videogame company in a basement full of high school dropouts. I stayed up every night writing for free for a few different websites, working on a movie that would ultimately stagnate in people's inboxes, and surviving on a diet of canned beans and spaghetti sauce. Along the way I also got into shape enough to run a half marathon. Some nights I wouldn't get back from my nightly run until close to midnight, after having worked a 12 hour day, and with more writing work to be done before I could fall asleep.
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