Recently I have been on a nostalgia kick of sorts.
I've been looking up, online, the people with whom I associated
some thirty years ago, in a different part of the country.
During that time I was giving up music as a livelihood
after having studied nothing else for years, and
I felt lost and adrift much of the time.
I looked outside myself a lot for strength and positivity.

I looked up both people whom I shied away from and people whom I felt safe with, and learned a few things.
Thirty years ago the internet was not what it is now, for one thing.
People have websites now who didn't have them then.

My baptismal sponsor -- I entered the church as an adult --
died at the age of eighty-seven; I had lost contact with her.
The performance troupe leader whose group I quit, because the leader had such a toxic attitude,
is still out there, although no longer touring.
Then there is the theatre person who let me live in her house
after I rejected an offer to tour with an opera company;
this latter is still around, and responded positively to my e-mail.

These people provided examples, positive or negative, of how to blaze one's own trail and go outside conventional livelihoods.
And in their own way they were generous to me
and acted as mentor figures.
Today I do not mentor others as I was mentored,
although when I was young I had that ambition, to teach others.

But I can reflect today on what I was taught and how I learned.
And it is pleasant to remember that part of the country,
where I had some happy years
and a big change from where I grew up or went to school.