I know Alias ended up sucking, but that's not the point

A mug Erin bought for me in D.C. The real deal.

I've always wanted to be in the CIA. Sorry, let me rephrase. It just sounded like a good lead, although not entirely accurate.

I've wanted to be in the CIA since I was 16 years old, and for some time I was actually working toward that goal in, I thought, very practical ways.

Erin and I went to Blockbuster to rent a TV series on DVD, something that would make us laugh and have a whole new carton of inside jokes. We had already watched a lot of Friends and Seinfeld and wanted something new, something none of our friends would know the quotes from.

We couldn't find anything.

Then we came across a small show that was currently in its 3rd of 4th season: J.J. Abram's Alias.

We rented the first two discs of the first season and were immediately attached. Sydney Bristow was not only a perfect aspiration, but our best friend.

We watched the both discs, which I believe was just four episodes, in one night and kept talking about it all week at school.

The next weekend, we were prepared. With only kettle corn and Arizona Iced Tea for sustenance, we sat on the couch for 21 hours straight and finished both the first and second seasons.

(A couple embarrassing side notes, although this whole post is probably embarrassing enough: Our only breaks were trips to the restroom. I made Erin accompany me most of the time because some of the scenes were quite terrifying. Also, at the end of the second season, after our marathon was other, the cliff hanger was so appalling that I actually cried for several minutes. Erin was either amused or annoyed.)

After becoming addicted to the show, we began to reveal that each of us was also interested in becoming a clandestine, intelligence seeking agent for our country. We began engaging in secret agent-type activities to prepare us for our future vocation.

We would dress in all black and coordinate fights for a camera sitting on my coffee table. We would run around her neighborhood jumping over fences and climbing up buildings in search of God knows what, again dressed in all black. We planned on putting ourselves through our own personal boot camp, complete with pull-ups, push-ups and doing some fancy footwork with tires on the ground, this time dressed in camo. That plan fell through, probably because I can't do a push up. We would go airsofting in the wilds of Mission Viejo, dressing in camo and surgical masks. We would make up word games and codes in case we got caught and had to transit an important rescue message, dressed in our normal clothes because we would do this in the middle of class or while driving around or while at a restaurant. The most elaborate of emulations involved the two of us plus another friend dressing up, in all black, for a fancy dinner party. Two of us were trapped. One had to decode a message to find the key. Then we shot each other in the backyard in the dark with our airsoft guns. After we realized we didn't have goggles and we could shoot an eye out, we came inside and wiggled around in this weird crawl space I found in my house. Came out from the crawl space because there were nails and spiders. Then went to the attic to find season three of Alias. It was one of the most fun nights in my life, even to this day.

Besides our CIA play, Erin and I actually researched how exactly to get into the Agency. I had the brains and Erin had the brawn. I really wasn't (am not) very athletic so I was jealous when Erin would climb up a tall platform and I would be left on the ground jumping off curbs to try and look as cool as possible. But then I was a little better at solving our codes. So it was all good.

But then I discovered, or at least concluded from certain websites, that you have to have military experience to get into the CIA. I knew I could never get into the military because I am legally blind in my left eye. This didn't really stop me, though.

I remember walking up to Erin who was in line to buy food at school and telling her when I wanted to stop working towards our goal. My youth pastor had just unexpectedly died and it was the first time I had ever experienced the reality of death.

For some reason, this incident was so shaking for me that I was convinced working toward such a goal was useless and a waste of time. I said that I wanted to think about things that really matter, even though I didn't really know what those things were and still don't have a proper inkling.

Even though I still have this weird, strong desire to go into combat and prove myself in challenging undercover situations, I am obviously not trying to be a CIA agent. I still have a lot of goals for myself, so many that they're in the double digits. But working as a Bristow-type agent is no longer one of them.

But I learned so much in this era of mine. I challenged myself physically more in that time than any other, even when I was a cheerleader. (That was said partly sarcastically, but I really did have challenges in conquering the thought of being thrown up in the air and trusting Jr. Highers to catch me.)

I learned how to face fears, as Tyra Banks as that sounds. (Remember when she faced dolphins?)

I used to be scared to be alone, of the dark, of jumping of high things, and of a lot of other things. But whenever I was in those situations I would honestly think to myself, "What would I do if I was in a real life-threatening situation?" and even cheesier, "What would Sydney Bristow do?"

I know this is ridiculous, but I was seriously changed by all this. Just hold a dumb airsoft gun and getting shot in the leg with a tiny plastic bullet made me tougher, I swear.

Because I'm not sure of the point of this post I'm going to encourage my handful of readers. Challenge yourself in some way. Even if it's completely silly.

People sit around so much doing just the bare minimum. You're capable of a lot more than flipping back to the last TV show just in time to escape the commercials.

Lately, Taekwondo has been a challenge. I'm pretty awful at it. But it's fun and so rewarding when I do something right.

And lately I've been running a lot, which I used to hate. I used to be able to run only half a mile. Now I'm running over three almost every day.

And this damn newspaper has certainly showed me what I'm capable of, if not only that I can pull all nighters every other weekend.

If you happened to read this whole post with getting bored, congratulations.

Now go jump off a roof.

Make sure you land in grass though. It hurts like hell to land on the cement.