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I think it's a fact of life that packing = bizarre nostalgia. For some reason, I still have a notebook I kept as a journal in 8th grade. I only ever read through it when I'm moving things. So that means I pick it up about twice a year. Once when I move out, once when I move back in. It follows me everywhere, and I'm still not entirely sure why. And now really isn't the time for nostalgia, because I still have a lot of writing to get finished, but I also need to be mostly packed in less than 24 hours if I want to get my things sent home, so...
It's especially odd this year, reading through the notebook. Usually I can manage a sort of detached embarrassed amusement at it and get a good laugh. I mean, the first line is "the light is low and dim, it matches my mood." Somehow, nearly eight years after I started writing it (9-24-98 at 8:38pm is the first entry in it), this is the first time the total self-confidence-lacking 8th grader has come through... and been me, too. With a bit less variation in sentence structure, and a bit lacking in proper spelling, and embarrassingly much on the middle school crushes and desire to write rather Sueish fanfiction (one plot for an Animorphs series starring my friends and me, though I had the strength to avoid giving myself Jake's position as leader, and another starring three Andalite girls, whose names I believe I culled from lists of obscure Indian tribes who became Warrior-Princesses. Yep)... but it's still me. And now I'm all "aww, I've always been a dork like this!" It sort of reaffirmsentry for the my existence despite the countless existential crises I've had this year. I mean, the entry for the 3rd of October starts "Okay, dilemma time. I want to write ANIMORPHS [inexplicably in all caps and printed, the rest is in a larger, neater version of my standard cursive] fan-fic [sic] and post it on Chee's message board, but I'm pretty much out of ideas. I've got one I think will work, about how the female Andalites feel. I need a good name for it though, something Chronicles or trilogy..." Once a fannish, writer-y dork, always a fannish, writer-y dork, I guess. I won't even go into the school-related stuff in here, though. I just can't believe how I appear to have been just as stressed about things in 8th grade as I am now. That's just... it was 8th grade. I'm not even sure I actually had homework! I guess I just take everything overly seriously. Or not seriously enough.
So, moving on from that particular yearly boobytrap I set for myself, I decided that sorting my books wasn't the biggest problem, because whether those ended up in storage or at home wouldn't matter too much, so I moved into the bedroom to clean things out under my bed. Where I discovered the un-read copies of people's comments. I skimmed over them, and they were mostly positive, telling me things I already knew were wrong. Then I hit one that pointed out that the second line of the second paragraph accidentally rhymed. Thrice. And I went "hmm, interesting that you noticed that." The actual response contained this paragraph, which for right now is my favourite thing anyone's said about my writing this quarter, and in addition to amusing me greatly, it's made me think:
( Fantasy is useless, but you're better than some people... )
Edit of Random Nostalgianess 1 [8:08]: So, I've made it through 2/3 of my desk drawers... I got to the second drawer down, and for once had no qualms about throwing away the old syllabi and such. Then I saw the Stack of Notebooks. I am a packrat when it comes to notebooks. And I decided "All right, I'm doing good... I'll finally throw these away. They take up a lot of space." And naturally, as all notebooks are able to force me to do, I opened them. Discovering therein a plethora of senior-year physics quizzes full of ridiculous puns and overemphasized punctuation (and one with a post-it from the prof making fun of my principal). An in-depth sountrack I'd made for my last year of high school. The evolution of my college-level margin doodles/ramblings from my junior year of high school on. I think I've got a horrible thing for written nostalgia in the form of notebooks. They are my weakness! I don't know if I've just taken increasingly disorganized notes over the years, or less in classes has seemed important, or if I've just had a tendency to take more and more disorganized classes. I have the oddest feeling it's the latter, though, just by virtue of the fact that most of the earlier ones were in math and science, and now I'm an English major. Figures, don't it?
It's especially odd this year, reading through the notebook. Usually I can manage a sort of detached embarrassed amusement at it and get a good laugh. I mean, the first line is "the light is low and dim, it matches my mood." Somehow, nearly eight years after I started writing it (9-24-98 at 8:38pm is the first entry in it), this is the first time the total self-confidence-lacking 8th grader has come through... and been me, too. With a bit less variation in sentence structure, and a bit lacking in proper spelling, and embarrassingly much on the middle school crushes and desire to write rather Sueish fanfiction (one plot for an Animorphs series starring my friends and me, though I had the strength to avoid giving myself Jake's position as leader, and another starring three Andalite girls, whose names I believe I culled from lists of obscure Indian tribes who became Warrior-Princesses. Yep)... but it's still me. And now I'm all "aww, I've always been a dork like this!" It sort of reaffirmsentry for the my existence despite the countless existential crises I've had this year. I mean, the entry for the 3rd of October starts "Okay, dilemma time. I want to write ANIMORPHS [inexplicably in all caps and printed, the rest is in a larger, neater version of my standard cursive] fan-fic [sic] and post it on Chee's message board, but I'm pretty much out of ideas. I've got one I think will work, about how the female Andalites feel. I need a good name for it though, something Chronicles or trilogy..." Once a fannish, writer-y dork, always a fannish, writer-y dork, I guess. I won't even go into the school-related stuff in here, though. I just can't believe how I appear to have been just as stressed about things in 8th grade as I am now. That's just... it was 8th grade. I'm not even sure I actually had homework! I guess I just take everything overly seriously. Or not seriously enough.
So, moving on from that particular yearly boobytrap I set for myself, I decided that sorting my books wasn't the biggest problem, because whether those ended up in storage or at home wouldn't matter too much, so I moved into the bedroom to clean things out under my bed. Where I discovered the un-read copies of people's comments. I skimmed over them, and they were mostly positive, telling me things I already knew were wrong. Then I hit one that pointed out that the second line of the second paragraph accidentally rhymed. Thrice. And I went "hmm, interesting that you noticed that." The actual response contained this paragraph, which for right now is my favourite thing anyone's said about my writing this quarter, and in addition to amusing me greatly, it's made me think:
( Fantasy is useless, but you're better than some people... )
Edit of Random Nostalgianess 1 [8:08]: So, I've made it through 2/3 of my desk drawers... I got to the second drawer down, and for once had no qualms about throwing away the old syllabi and such. Then I saw the Stack of Notebooks. I am a packrat when it comes to notebooks. And I decided "All right, I'm doing good... I'll finally throw these away. They take up a lot of space." And naturally, as all notebooks are able to force me to do, I opened them. Discovering therein a plethora of senior-year physics quizzes full of ridiculous puns and overemphasized punctuation (and one with a post-it from the prof making fun of my principal). An in-depth sountrack I'd made for my last year of high school. The evolution of my college-level margin doodles/ramblings from my junior year of high school on. I think I've got a horrible thing for written nostalgia in the form of notebooks. They are my weakness! I don't know if I've just taken increasingly disorganized notes over the years, or less in classes has seemed important, or if I've just had a tendency to take more and more disorganized classes. I have the oddest feeling it's the latter, though, just by virtue of the fact that most of the earlier ones were in math and science, and now I'm an English major. Figures, don't it?
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