This morning it occurred to me that 20 years ago today on this exact day I started my training as a therapist.

20 years ago today I started my master's program in the Couple and Family Therapy program at Antioch University Seattle.

But why did I do that?

Why did I choose to be a therapist?

I was young, I was 24, it was the 90s, anything seemed possible back then, you know, the dot-com boom was happening.

I could have worked for a startup, I could have worked for Microsoft or Boeing in Seattle like all my friends and family.

That would have been an easy path for me.

So why did I decide the hard path of being a therapist?

I didn't know any therapists.

No one in my family wanted me to be a therapist.

None of my friends were interested in psychology.

I was just a 24-year-old sort of douche bag who drank beer with my buddies while watching the Seattle

Supersonics every night. At least that's what I can remember about my life at

24. You know 20 years is a long time. So I don't really remember what I was

thinking. I mean I have a story in my head about what I was thinking back then, but there's no real way of knowing if that story has morphed over time, right?

If only I had a time machine, I could go back in time and ask myself, Kirk, why did you decide to be a therapist

this year? Why did you do that? But I actually do have a time machine and it is called my journal

or my diary or whatever you want to call it.

So let's see what my journal says.

In March of 1995, this is when I decided to become a therapist, I wrote, I'm going to be a psychologist. Two weeks ago I suddenly decided to either

be a music teacher or a psychologist. Although I don't think I could discipline children, so

I'll be a therapist. I figured out that psychology has been a common thread throughout my whole life and I didn't even know it.

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