I (just now, actually) re-found a blog that I started in the summer of 2013, right before my second year of college. I started it for many of the same reasons I started this one: I have a lot of thoughts about a lot of things that a lot of my friends don't particularly want to listen to (and private diaries are entirely out of the question—I'm sorry—for there is a narcissist within I cannot ignore). Alas, I only managed to maintain my previous blog for a pathetic three posts, one of which was a Tiny Tim video that I called "the greatest thing to have ever existed."
What I found interesting, though, were the parallels between that summer two years ago and this past summer, which has, as of today, officially ended with an airy pffft. I learned a bit of Tiny Tim on my ukulele this summer ("Tiptoe Through the Tulips," anyone? Who wants a cover?), I experimented with photography, and I forced myself to observe suburbia from an outsider's perspective, becoming enchanted with the mundane and studying the iconography of my environment. It was astonishing to reread the second post I made on that blog and realize that my exploration of suburbia was almost a watered-down version of what I did way back then, at 18 years old, now based less in research of cultural predecessors and aesthetic emulation and more in paltry record-keeping. You can read it here, if this interests you. It got nine likes on Wordpress, how fun!
It's amazing how little we change from year-to-year, how the moments we experience, the books we read, the people we meet seem insignificant at the time but quietly become the core of our personhood. Our identity seems less based in conscious decision and more in subconscious, sometimes insidious coalescence of little moments and trivial decisions, and meaning can only be ascribed after the fact with wisdom and self-reflection on our side. I could never have guessed, in the moment, that Nabokov, Eggleston, The Waves, Arcade Fire, even Tiny Tim would become my own cultural keystones I'd refer back to again and again and again. When I was growing up—in my early adolescence—I took care of replaying and remembering the moments I felt were the most dramatic and life-changing. I could track, by the year, the boys I liked, the friend groups I made, the classes I took as milestones in my personal development. But ever since I graduated from high school, change has seemed far less intentional—I more or less let life happen to me, and I don't take much time to think of what I may remember in a few years. As a consequence, then, there's a certain youthfulness, a wide-eyed idealism that I've at once grown weary of and come to mourn.
There's a comic that Jenny Yu, tumblr-famous illustrator and comic artist, made a few years back that really spoke on this feeling in much clearer terms than I could ever hope to produce.
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| NOT MY WORK—Jenny Yu's lovely work |
Today was supposed to be my first day of class, but somehow my schedule was rearranged without my knowledge and I ended up sitting in a class that I did not belong in for a few minutes. I've now discovered that my day off is Monday, not Friday, and I have, in effect, a two-Sunday schedule instead of a Friday extension. I hate how dull Sundays make me feel.
I may record a video of me flipping through the journal I created this summer, the suburbia-themed journal. It's only halfway finished, and there are even more entries that are half-finished, though I don't know if I'll ever get around to them. At the time, while making them, I felt very proud of what I did, but now I cringe at the sight of the try-hard, sincerely insincere pages. At least I will finish the cover, for sure.
I looked up therapists today because I feel dead inside and self destructive and fear academic and social failure. It is finally getting cold outside, and I wore a jacket and walked 11 minutes to school. I apologize for this rambling blog post—there are half a dozen more in my drafts that are even worse than this, can you believe.
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