it's not too late

stuck to the hutch of my desk, i have a few treasured things: two pictures of me with friends, two printing-press-printed cards, a photograph of some ducks from the 1950s, and two 3x5 cards with a simple phrase sharpied on them.  one of those cards reads:

it's not too late

i wrote that in the fall of 2008.  i had spent some time trying to figure out what direction to take my life and had been bothered by this quandary for quite a while.  then i saw wall-e.  i feel in love with it and, after a few more showings, was thinking that, if i could do it all over again, i'd've been an animation major so that i could be working at pixar or something.

then i realized: yes, i was 29, not 22, but how many people would love to be 29 again and make different choices?  i grabbed a nearby note card and wrote myself a reminder: it's not too late.
a few years later, i'm at one of the best grad schools for computer animation.

today i was thinking about that card and about how i'm learning other things that i wish i would have learned ten years ago.  and it can be frustrating.  i'd like to go back and do some things differently and not miss out on some opportunities.  to try some different choices.  and put into practice what i've learned.  and that's the hard fact of life, that we can't go back and redo something.  but the other side of that coin is that, with few exceptions, it's not too late to make those changes.

i thought about that a bit more as i searched for a picture for this:  wall-e is modular.  if one part of him gets broken, his optics, wheel gears, or whatever can be replaced.  interchangeable parts: marvelous.  but that one circuit board within him is what makes him him.
just some thoughts.