You know my friend Dr. Heinreich told me something that has really stuck with me, “It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, famous or unknown, we all long for the same things.” Michael Jordan wants to feel loved by his wife, and the manager at the bowling ally likes to hold his newborn baby.Why is it life feels mundane after the credits roll in a movie? I ask this because they’ve rolled one film after another for our flight back to the US. In New Orleans I watched a couple movies at the theater. The closing song came on, the isle lights were flicked on and so were our cameras. My life in a TV show picked up where the movie left off. There I was soon to become an MTV personality, and all I felt was reality…the reality of driving back to our house, going to bed, and then waking up the next morning. And when our cameras stopped rolling in late May, the scissors of the editors began to create a TV show about our lives, guaranteed to be the best yet and a must see on the 10spot. Now I watched the edited version and all I can think is, “wow that’s edited.” If my life were really that entertaining, I would have people looking over my shoulder watching me type on this laptop. But they aren’t, reality loses.

So pop culture follows the lives of celebrities through magazines, tabloids, and entertainment news. But essentially they are following an edited version of each of those people. (I flip through “People” from the seat pocket in front of me.”

Fame.

My 15 minutes will be up and then another stranger will assume position in a hip house along with 6 others. I know this is passing. Five years from now I will order a cup of coffee and she will look at me just long enough to give me a receipt. I am not pouting in my own defeat (I am not over yet), but am recognizing that the root of m@ will carry me through life, not the elusive spotlight of a fickle industry. In Britney Spear’s song “Lucky” she asks, “What happens when it stops?” For me, I roll with the life I’ve forged over the past 21 years. For her? I don’t know.

Today is the last day of my endless summer. I haven’t secured credit hours to push me towards graduation, I haven’t gained job experience to give me the upper hand in the next job interview, and I haven’t stressed at all. It is a bittersweet step back into classes. So much has happened in the last 8 months of my life. Almost every day of those months I have typed out the events, thoughts, and perspective on my present. Seeing an increase in depth and texture to each journal entry reflects that I have grown very much in this small bracket of my life.

The clock is ticking and we are edging our way back to Atlanta.