{"id":1372,"date":"2006-01-24T00:18:43","date_gmt":"2006-01-24T08:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2006\/01\/24\/self-portrait-tuesday-amorphous-adulthood\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:45:02","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:45:02","slug":"self-portrait-tuesday-amorphous-adulthood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2006\/01\/24\/self-portrait-tuesday-amorphous-adulthood\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-Portrait Tuesday: Amorphous Adulthood"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"photopost\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mindfulone\/90530381\/\" title=\"Photo Sharing\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.flickr.com\/24\/90530381_b783c2b430.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"340\" alt=\"self-portrait tuesday me, december 1982\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p>Me and Kiki, the family cat, just after Christmas 1982. The state of my life: I was 19, working as a dental assistant, earning $2.30 per hour, living with my parents, paying my room and board, feeling alienated from my religion, and grappling with my identity. I did not have a driver&#8217;s license or a car. I didn&#8217;t know what I wanted to do, how I wanted to be. I had no self-confidence. I felt trapped in my life, which felt small and gray. I blindly inched my way through my twenties. When I think back on those years, they still seem bleak. Sometimes I blanch at how much opportunity was lost, how my gifts were squandered (or wasted away for lack of passion) during those years of narrow vision. But I cannot retrieve them, so I try to avoid regret; I&#8217;d like to think the struggle gave me the depth to empathize with others in similar straits. I&#8217;m deeply grateful that my life has changed. The 19-year-old me would <em>never<\/em> recognize me now, but I do remember her. Oh yes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Me and Kiki, the family cat, just after Christmas 1982. The state of my life: I was 19, working as a dental assistant, earning $2.30 per hour, living with my parents, paying my room and board, feeling alienated from my religion, and grappling with my identity. I did not have a driver&#8217;s license or a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-science"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11009,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions\/11009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}