High school was not a fun time for me, as I was the class nerd and had a hard time fitting in. College was a revelation: it was suddenly cool to be smart! I had the chance to start over, and made new friends, rebooting my social life, and felt accepted and fun, which was a whole new concept. My best friends and I got an apartment together my sophomore year and things seemed great. But the design program at my college was rough; I was in the studio every night and through the weekend, and my roommates complained that I was never hanging out. The tension got worse as the year went on, and I was told that if I didn’t make time to be social, I was “out”. I didn’t, and pretty soon I’d lost all of my friends; my life was back to where I was in high school, the studio work I was pouring my waking hours into looked like crap, and I felt talentless, friendless, and aimless. I considered dropping out. I drew pictures of dark holes and caves and deep valleys. I wondered why I was even bothering.
At the lowest point of my life to date, I went music shopping; why not? At random, I ran across the soundtrack to “The Point” by Harry Nilsson, a cartoon I loved as a kid, and when this song came on — “Life Line” — I felt like Harry had written a song for exactly the way I felt. Down at the bottom, fears all around me, cold, so lonely. It brought me out of my dark thoughts. I stuck with things, thrived on my own, and came away stronger than I was before.
