My Alternate Universes

Since I have been working non-stop lately, I decided to take a page from my earlier years of blogging and on the weekends just write about whatever was on my mind today, which was …

Did you ever read a science fiction book or watch a movie where there is an alternate universe, like where the protagonist doesn’t take the train so doesn’t meet her future husband who turns out to be a serial killer?

When I was a teenager, I must have a read a dozen of those books.

It often occurs to me that alternate universes are real. Hear me out.

Yesterday, we spent an hour driving in Los Angeles traffic from Santa Monica to Baldwin Park, a drive I made several times a week for years, to a judo club where my daughter trained. She competed in two Olympics and during her decade of competing and training, judo was a black hole for my time – getting her to practice, doing drills with her, taking care of travel arrangements for her to compete around the world, fighting with corrupt officials. I hadn’t thought of any of that in years and when I run into people from those days, my first thought is, “Gee you look a lot older” – which they do because I haven’t seen them in ten years.

Twenty years ago, I was teaching at Jamestown College, in North Dakota. If it was located in Santa Monica, I might be there still. I liked the work I did and the people I worked with. When my husband died, there were many kind people in the community who gave me and my children a helping hand – invited us to dinner, fixed things around the house – during those first weeks when I was just in a daze. After that, I did a LOT of consulting work, to occupy my mind as much as pay the medical and funeral bills. I rarely run into people from those days. Some moved away and we lost touch. Others, like me, just were very busy with kids and work. I’ve driven through Jamestown once in the past 20 years and stopped to visit my husband’s grave.

Forty-plus years ago, I was in high school. I hated high school and most the people around me. I was in foster homes, juvenile hall. I’ve never been back to any high school I attended – I think there were 5, as I kept getting expelled – and I wouldn’t recognize a single person from those days.

So, there you have three different geographic locations, groups of people, activities that were my whole life at one point and that I just stepped out of into a completely different world. Everything in my daily life, from the people I see to the activities I do to where I spend my days to the weather is different.

It helps me to keep this in mind as I sometimes struggle to push this company forward, to get more people to know about us, try our games. I’ve undergone a lot of seismic shifts in my life and there WILL be another one.

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