sloshball might be the greatest sport ever invented. (albeit some argue that trampoline dodgeball be considered a close second.)

for those of you unfamiliar with the rules, they are actually fairly simple:

• it's kickball with a keg at second base.
• one has to drink a beer before going onto third.
• a full beer in hands at all times is essential -- both in the realm of the game and in life.

everyone winds up pretty tipsy. pretty dirty. and absolutely drenched in beer.

of course, the middle school sex jokes are endless. naturally, i played third base. more like sloppy second, but close enough.

although sloshball is highly regarded and widely played in california, its novelty hasn't quite made it to the east coast. maybe it's because we have stricter drinking laws there. or maybe it's because on the east coast we're too high strung to take the time to stop and smell the beer.

instead of updating my resume for school, monitoring media for work, or baking the cookies i promised a coworker i'd make, i'm writing this and shocked to realize that this is my last weekend in california.

somewhere in between the whirlwind of final exams and scaling the learning curve at my internship, the summer went by mostly unappreciated and definitely undersexed. in the midst of working hard and hardly working at kuugle, i guess i didn't notice how much more competent, resourceful, and ummm ... human ... i feel outside the masochistic bubble of business school.

which is why i'm having a small panic attack about starting law school (to be further explored, explained, and obsessed over next week).

being 3000 miles away from and 3 hours behind every person i love -- including my team of therapists -- has been an odd dynamic between feeling desperately lonely and unexplainably free.

being 3000 miles away from and 3 hours behind the university grounds imposing academia upon my feeble mind has been an odd dynamic between yearning for student life and dreading the responsibilities associated with it.

being 3000 miles away from and 3 hours behind my former career has been an odd dynamic between missing the daily struggle for social good as a nonprofit profakesional and furthering my own success as a corporate professional.

and being 3000 miles away from and 3 hours behind my favorite new york i-banker basically means that even when i work late, we still leave our jobs at the same time.

i suppose that being twenty-something is fundamentally about navigating the base between our adolescent years at first and our adulthood at third.

and maybe it took spending the summer in california to remind me that before running to third in the game of life, second base is way better if you take the time to stop and smell the beer.

(... and, whenever possible, have a drink in hand. oh, and play with balls.)