I finished off  The Interestings: A Novel by Meg Wolitzer yesterday morning. It was a sprawling novel, beginning in a summer camp for creative kids and ending in the indignities of middle age. It was a frustrating book in some ways. The book doesn’t have a traditional plot; it’s more just the unfolding of life for a group of camp buddies.  Many of the characters are either irritating, shallow, or simply poorly sketched out, so I really loved only one character in this book. But the subject matter — a group of friends with big ambitions living in New York City — is so familiar that I found it difficult to put the book down. I had to finish off the last five pages in the car ride to church yesterday.

Where do people end up? Which one of your friends from high school became extremely successful and which ones sunk into an ordinary life? Did the people who you thought would be famous and noteworthy actually get there? Did the successful ones get there by sheer personal talent or did luck, connections, and money help grease their way? Fun questions.

I am a friend hoarder. I hate to lose people. So, I have the phone number, street address, or the Facebook IM of nearly everybody that I have known since I”ve been 11. Now, I’m not making daily phone calls to all those people. Many of them just get the yearly holiday card. But I know where there are, and that’s somehow comforting. My daily-phone-call-friends have been with me, since I was 21.

Looking back at the set of friends from high school, all are financially okay. Many are more than okay, but none won the Pulizer Prize or were on a Time magazine cover. I suppose everybody is medium successful and is medium content with their life choices.

One friend was effortlessly brilliant, but never wanted success. She applied to Harvard for early admission, because her mother forced her to. In her typical passive-aggressive style, she didn’t submit an essay with her admission package. Instead, she drew a cartoon of adorable astronauts jumping in and out of craters in the moon. When they emerged from the craters, the astronauts carried little banners with question marks. She said with some satisfaction that the cartoon meant nothing, and it was sure to get her rejected from Harvard. Well, the admission committee thought it was brilliant, and she was accepted. Later at Harvard, she drew many puzzling cartoons for the cover of Harvard Lampoon Magazine. But she never really wanted success, and later settled quite happily into life as a stay-at-home mom in Washington, DC with her very successful husband.

After college, I moved to New York City, where I met people of extraordinary ambition. They uprooted themselves from suburbs all over the country leaving behind family and friends with smaller quantities of ambition. And everybody is fine. Now, nobody wrote an award winning novel or is playing cello in the New York Philharmonic, but everybody has a job and pays the rent. The ones who have a little less career success are compensated with nice spouses and warm children. Others chose a life of independence from families and 9 to 5 jobs and are content, too.

So, flipping through my mental Rolodex (how old am I?) of friends, it is pretty obvious that success isn’t making it to the “Top 30 Under 40” list or following one consistent career path over time. Success is surviving with a smile, style, and a weekend bottle of wine.

I like to think there isn’t a deadline for success. A final grade on one’s life shouldn’t happen at age 40 or 50. Hopefully, we still have time to keep doing stuff that makes us happy. Maybe, there is still time for a reinvention or two.