Is this it?

A lot of the time at lunch, the girls and I will "do homework" meaning having our books out at the caf table while talking and eating. At first this was valuable for me. I learned a lot about who I was supposed to be and who these girls are by listening in, but after two full weeks it's starting to grate on me. It's very hard for me to get invested in these girls' problems because I've been a grown up so teen drama doesn't really matter ot me anymore. Plus, with time travel and having my sex changed, I feel like I have more profound things on my mind than "where to buy cute tops." (Although come to think of it that's a lot easier for me to wrap my head around than the other stuff. Forever 21 just opened at Lakeville Center.)

So I spend a lot of time just kind of zoned out, trying to focus on math but really just watching everybody at every table. Trying to create a mental profile of where are they now, in 2016? Who became a doctor, a real estate agent, who fell off the face of the earth?

Here's a little spoiler for you -- it's terrifyingly easy to keep in touch with all of these people in the future thanks to the way the internet expands and mutates over the next couple of years, where everyone has a profile on what's called "social media." Right now, I think, somewhere in Boston, a guy named Mark Zuckerberg is hatching a scheme that is going to change the world -- arguably for the worse, but let's not get into that.

The point is, I'm vaguely aware of what happens to a lot of these people, and yet, do I actively keep in touch with them in the future? Of course not. There's exactly one person from high school who is still in my life in the future, and it honestly wasn't by choice.

But I look at these kids all milling around at lunch and in the halls. This is everything for them right now. This is their world. It's mine too, so I should probably get a little more engaged. I don't know why I'm here, but it's probably not just to sit on my ass and thumb through Math Horizons 10.

Am I actually supposed to change anybody's life? I'm walking around afraid to change anything to affect the future, but... I guess that's the point, right? It's not like I can Marty McFly myself out of existence since I'm already here. 

It's hard to know, but you'd think I ought to do something. Of all the times I thought "If I could go back then, knowing what I know now," I never considered it might actually happened, especially not this way. There's got to be a reason I'm here and I am desperate to find it.