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Monday, March 14, 2011

Where we came from

Every so often, I wonder, "What was I doing this time fifteen years ago? Ten years ago?" Thanks to my copious documentation, I'm able to actually go back and answer these questions.

The answer to the former question is still generally "something really embarrassing." I usually have a red face all the way through reading entries that correspond to a time where my age ended with "-teen." Occasionally I'm able to find a not-embarrassing entry, such as this "Public Journal" (blog) entry from February 8, 1996:

I'm looking for a new place to live - imagine that! This godawful place in the middle of the boonies with crazy people that practise when they like, inconsiderate of their roommates. I have found one place - quiet, downtown, and vegan that sounds just 'bout perfect for me.

I'm fighting the urge to quit school for a while. I've been going straight through for three years, college and up until last June high school, I'm only seventeen and damnit, I need to play! I just have too much to worry about.

To combat some of it I bought myself grade-school Valentines.


This time ten years ago, I was teaching English in Korea. I wrote this in a March 31, 2001 Public Journal entry:

I feel like an adolescent again, everything new and strange and out of my control. Truthfully, I'm not even sure who I am. I guess that's part of why I came. I don't want to have a breakdown and have to skip out on my life when I'm 43 because I never took the time to figure out who I was when I was younger. Sometimes I feel like a collection of conflicting thoughts, something it might be interesting to read but is pretty pointless just sitting up in my head. I have passions, but they don't burn - or maybe it just seems that way because I'm starting to calm down but still expect that intense response to any given situation. Even during the harsh moments, I think it's good that I'm here - I can't exactly up and run. I just have to sit and let it be. I'm certainly learning a lesson in patience and I know that's good. I've always been so restless and uncertain, wondering what else (and better) awaited me in that great big world. There's nothing beyond the moment, though, is there? Like Nora Perry's poem, "Too Late," none of us can live in the world of could-have-been or might-have been. This is where I am. Isn't that unique? Isn't that amazing? Here might very well be the best place to be - here in the sense of time, not of space. I'm not intending on moving to Korea at this point in my life. :)

I used to be mortified at the thought of my journals, public or otherwise. Did I really need to document all that crap? I'd wonder, imagining entries about eleventy billion times worse than the ones I'd actually written. On September 23, 2010, I revisited the question and was surprised to find it was actually really good to read through two decades worth of journals:

People have often asked me if I regretted keeping journals. Up until I actually read every single journal entry I've written over the course of two decades - leading to a source mom-related entry document of 90k words - I might have replied with a hearty, "you betcha." Since reading those journals, I've had a very different feeling on the matter. This was, in part, because I was able to reclaim so many memories that'd long since fled my mind. In the pages of my journals I discovered there was a lot of joy woven through even the hardest times. In conclusion, as I touched on February 6, 2010, "These words may not bring my mom back, but they're a helluva thing to hold close to my heart as February 6, 2011 nears." Sure, there's stuff I wish I hadn't done. Alongside those things, though, are adventures I wouldn't trade for anything.

It's easy to remember only one part of history when you're not faced with the more complicated totality of it. Examining the whole, the only conclusion I can draw is this: Who I am now is a product of everything I was before--good and bad, for whatever those words are worth. I love my life now. I needed all those experiences then to get to this exact now. It's good to look back and remember this.

It's good to see where I came from, and to wonder just how far I have yet to go. Looking back on how much I have done, it's easy for me to see that there's still so much left to do, and to be.

3 comments:

  1. I wish I had such great documentation of my life!

    I was wondering: Where did you teach in Korea? I wrote a blog yesterday about how I'd like to find someone I once knew, and he taught at the Sejong Institute of Foreign Language. (I'm not entirely sure that's the institute's proper name.) I hope you don't mind my asking. I think he might have been in Korea at the same time as you were (not that that means you'd know him, but I thought I'd give it a shot!) Thanks!

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  2. I never mind! I worked at a tiny private academy in rural South Korea, so it's unlikely I know him. :) If I did, I'd be ever so happy to have contact info. I haven't been able to find any of my friends from my stay there!

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  3. Thanks for not minding. :)

    I'm disappointed, of course. I guess I didn't know how much hope I was harboring that you would know him or know of him. It's so strange: when someone's in your life, you think they'll be there forever (or at least I think that way). Then when the person disappears, it hits so hard. I guess I'm guilty of thinking that people I'm connected to will always be there, that we'll always have that connection, and anytime we want we can pick up the phone or get in our cars, and there we'll be, talking again, laughing again... But that's not how life works, right?

    I hope your find your friends. Thanks again.

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