Thank goodness for Chrome saving things forever and ever, or else I don’t think I’d have even found my way back here.
But you guys are all still here and writing! I had basically forgotten that this place existed. BellaNox (is that how you tag someone on ProseBox?) posted on Facebook about reading old diary entries, and it inspired me to go back and do the same, and I was like, “Gosh, I kind of wish I still had a place to write like this.” Ta-dah! Wishes really can come true.
Turns out, by the way, that I was utterly obnoxious at age 18, but my 34-year-old self is actually pretty impressed with the level of introspection and wisdom of my 24-year-old self, which is what I’ve spent the past little bit reading. I had just moved to Minneapolis and gotten my first job that I didn’t totally hate, and I was in the early stages in my relationship with Ariel, which is equal parts fascinating and mortifying to read about, because I was extremely smitten at that point, and it’s weird to think that that’s how everything started in a relationship where I ended up spending about 3.5 out of a total of 4.5 years feeling totally turned off and smothered by the guy.
It’s just interesting to go back to events that happened so many years ago and actually be able to read an extremely detailed account of how you felt about them. Especially when it’s things you completely forgot about. Like, my early-high school boyfriend, with whom I had an absolutely wretched enemy-ship (is there a real word for this that I’m not thinking of?) for the last two years of high school, emailed me an apology for being a dick right at the end of senior year, and I posted it in my diary. I was SHOCKED to read that tonight - I would have never in a million years have been able to dredge up such a memory from my poor, ancient brain. That was almost half my friggin’ life ago, for god’s sake. Or, in October 2006, when I was working at a high school, a science teacher took a book of mine from the break room (he apparently thought someone left it as a hint for him?) and I put up signs and someone called and left me an anonymous tip and what the fuck is this story even about and why should anyone care, except I bothered to record it in my diary, and that does actually make it kind of hilarious and fascinating. Those little day-to-day details that are totally stupid and mundane in the moment are utterly fascinating - or at least I think so - once enough time has passed that it becomes a study in what things were like. What were the things you cared about? Who the hell even were you??
I used to write all the time. Whenever something stressed me out, my first reaction was always to want to sit down and process it in writing. At some point - and I don’t care to investigate when - this stopped…and I think I have been less emotionally-sorted because of it. I do best when I have a lot of time to process. I guess it’s just a Real Adult Life issue - at a certain point, you don’t actually have like upwards of an hour a day just to Sort Out Your Shit. But that’s sad - especially if having time to Sort Out Your Shit makes you a better you.
I’d like to get back into it and I don’t know if I will. I am actually taking the summer off from Normal Work, and, in theory, have plenty of time for Sorting. Yet…I’m out of the habit, and now when I’m stressed, all I want is a beer. Granted, I have a lot less shit to be sorted out and processed*, but the shit I do have…I don’t really ever get around to processing.
*Side story: in high school, my favorite teacher/quasi-mentor told me that as you get older, things calm down in your life and everything doesn’t seem so dramatic all the time, etc. - and I completely believed him, but my mind was totally BLOWN. I was just like, “…That’s amazing. The fact that such a lifestyle can exist is AMAZING. I CANNOT WAIT.” Super glad he was right.
Anyway.
I need to go watch This Old House. But maybe I’ll be back?
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