Ask me again and I'll tell ya the same

Apparently, I've made no progess in the last eight years. Sure, I went to college, lived abroad, and held a couple good jobs, but I'm basically the same as I've always been.
The other day I finally got around to cleaning some more stuff out of my old closet at my parents' house. Fortunately, most of my pursuits over the years have been captured for posterity in the form of the written word (my good old newspaper portfolio alone gives a good history of what I've been all about these many years) as well as in photographs. I found stuff dating back to my freshman year of high school. I think I'm better-looking now. Or at least better-accessorized (that is, I'm no longer wearing socks that match my shirt AND my scrunchie-- in fact, I've given up on scrunchies all together) and I've been a few more places, but I'm still basically the same girl I've always been. I found photos of me chumming it with the exchange students (why are foreigners so darned appealing?), pouring myself into one art form or another (acting, music, dance, writing, photography, etc.), and hanging out with the same people over and over again. They have different names but my friend Kat is the same as my friend Melissa who is the same as my friend Elizabeth. Laura and Jen are two peas in a pod. Katie and Marie are personality cousins at least. Even the boys I go out with could be categorized into just a few types, with none of them ever working out because I'm waiting for Adam Brody's long-lost Mormon twin (who was my friend Russ, but he doesn't count because he's married and his wife is with child, and it was always purely platonic anyway) to come meandering into my life. The patterns are remarkable. Even when I change locations, I end up in the same situations. Long before my good times with Chevron, there was Rajek, a toothless Polish boy working at a Petrol station in Warsaw. And before Raj, there was Pawel, the toothless man from Poznan who gave me a little bear holding a heart that says "I love you" in the train station. I'm consistently popular with the drunk men-- starting with the dude who licked my neck in London when I was 17, all the way up to this old grandpa cat-calling me from the next drive-up station at the bank the other day (his grandson was, too.... creepy). I'm cyclically drawn to the same colors-- my favorites rotate in time. I'm still afraid of slumber parties and over-nights away from my house. I'm still working on some of the same goals I've had since high school. I'd like to think I've made some progress, but maybe the problems were bigger than I gave them credit for.
Some things I hope won't change in the next ten years. Like my enthusiasm or even my naivete, insofar as it keeps me dreaming and working and scheming. I hope Sokphal (aka Rainbow Bright) is still my best friend and that I'm still donating hair to Locks of Love (by the way-- it's so blasted hot here all the time that I'm sorely tempted to chop off all my hair at my next appointment, but I think vanity is keeping me from taking scissors to it quite yet). I hope I can play a few more songs on my piano, harmonica and dulcimer by then, and that I'll finally be the tambourine whiz I've always dreamt of. And I hope my great American novel will be finished so I can get to writing the non-fiction, which is where you make your money anyway. Oh, but I hope they find a cure for nosebleeds and mono by then.