Round about the beginning of December I thought to myself (it has only just occurred to me now what a stupidly redundant phrase that is. I apologize) that I really do miss this sort of writing (by which I mean this sort of freeform “I’ve got nothing to say but it’s OK” random babbling thing that I do that a few people once told me at different times they kinda liked) and as much as I may be plagued with self-doubt (it happens, you know) that I have nothing of real import to say, it’s time to just GET OVER IT and start up again.
(I actually did write this down the other day: “To hell with it, my life IS interesting, dammit, at the very least in a Doctor Whovian all-Earthlings-are-miraculous-and-special sort of way.”)
(And besides, maybe I have it backwards. Maybe instead of waiting until something interesting happens to write about, maybe the discipline of writing stuff down will help me be better at going off to have adventures.)
And then I thought, “but why not wait until the beginning of 2010, fresh start and all that.” And then I sat back down on my comfy couch to watch more LOST episodes.
And then the first of the new year happened on a Friday, and then it was the weekend, and while unemployment renders every day much like the next I still cling barnacle style to the semblance of being a productive member of society, so I observe weekends as much as possible, so that meant giving myself until Monday to (re)start this new long-form blog writing thing.
And then I forgot that Monday, yesterday, I had a real-life writing deadline and by the time I was done with that my mind wouldn’t go to where I wanted it to and I thought well, fine, this can wait. And then I posted a picture of my cat so you all would know that at least I felt a little guilty about not living up to the promise you didn’t know I’d made.
So here I am now.
Yeah, I missed this. (Too.)
(Was that presumptuous?)
So. How’ve you been?
On New Year’s Day I went to my friend Aaron’s place to watch Northwestern lose yet another Bowl game. I don’t really follow football, and I haven’t watched an NU game since they went to the Rose Bowl in 1995 (not that I remember the year off the top of my head — someone else reminded me), but it was a chance to be with other NU alumni, which I haven’t done in a very long time. (Like, I think, ever.) All of the other alums there had graduated the spring before I started, but it was still a lot of fun to talk about Evanston and games and dorms and classes, specifically the classes we all blew off. I remembered a course I took as a freshman. It was a requirement — while I didn’t have to take any writing classes (thanks, AP English!) I did have to sign up for Freshman Seminars, and my memory of these are very hazy. I remember in one I had to do a family tree project of some sort (I know, not exactly the thing you’d think was college-appropriate, but I do remember that assignment was how I learned my father’s family’s original ancestral name, so that’s cool) but the other one was something like my fourth or fifth choice, and I was not all that excited about it. I remember it was on Moliere, which in itself is great, but the professor was about 500 years old and acted as though he hated the very notion of youth. (I seem to recall he looked not unlike that Six Flags dancing guy.) If I’m remembering correctly, he also assumed we all spoke fluent French, even though the literature was all in translation and the course description said specifically that no French language knowledge was required. (Y’know, even if I’m not remembering correctly, let’s just say that’s what happened.) Moliere in book form was fine, hilarious, but Moliere in class form was an absolute snooze. I doodled in my notebook for the entire 90-minute class. I created a special doodling style that I still turn to today in my hours of doodling need. It looks like this:
I devoted an entire page of notebook paper to it, bringing different brightly colored pens to each class to work on a different section, coloring in each piece. One class period was orange, the next was magenta, the following week would be green. I only doodled in this class. By the quarter’s end I had a masterpiece. I wish I’d saved it. And yet I was a little embarrassed by what I’d done. It was proof that I hadn’t been paying attention in class, yes, but more than that, it was…you know, just doodles. It felt wrong that I should be so proud of something so silly.
Sometimes I wish my late-30s self could reach across time and give my 18-year-old self a healthy smack. I wish I’d had the self-possession that I have now to say, “You know what, this is AWESOME” even if it was silly, to frame it and hang it up over my desk as a reminder that even in the bleakest of circumstances (and at 18 in my privileged corner of the world, yes, “bleakest of circumstances” was indeed a yawn-inducing class I didn’t want to take in the first place) I can at least make something.
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