Thursday, November 27, 2003

Sisters, nostalgia, and other diseases

My sister Ashley got in from Northern Arizona University today. Believe it or not, it was actually good to see her for the first time since July. She seems to be doing pretty well, though the questions about what I'm going to do with the rest of my life started coming too quickly. Oh well, I'm used to it by now. I can't wait until I actually have an answer.

After my parents spent two hours performing their nightly ritual of watching "Law & Order" reruns, we spent the remainder of the evening watching old family videos at Ashley's insistence. There are definitely a few moments of pure hilarity that had me laughing to the point of tears. Sometimes it just feels good to laugh that hard.

Feeling in the nostalgic mood after that, I pulled out the old (and by old I mean 32 MB disk space and 20 MHz processor) Macintosh Centris 610 that I used throughout middle and high school; I wanted to forage through old songs I'd written and novels I'd started back then to see if they offered any ideas. And what a trip down amnesia lane it was! I think some of my personal favorites were the short story I wrote about Earth being taken over by super-intelligent Spam; the essays I was forced to write about "The Ascent of Man", the college-level book I had to study in eighth grade; and a whole host of crappy love songs I wrote while I was a big fan of Boyz II Men. If you could see some of the cheesy, cliche lyrics I once wrote...wow. I really hope I'm out of that phase.

However, all my past writings weren't entirely without value. For instance, I dug up all of my old college essays and read through them, particularly the ones for schools that accepted me. Though I doubt I'll write about the merits of "Seinfeld" for my grad school essay, it still got me back into the frame of mind that I'll soon need to be in 24/7.

Also, some of the stories and songs I wrote back in the day weren't half bad. One of the songs even gave me an idea for a new song along the same lines. And most of the stories were written from the perspective of an immature high schooler, which should certainly help me master the voice for my novel. Which I swear I will make progress on eventually. :-)

Song lyric of the day:
"So I always get nostalgic with that song
But now it's over
Will you hear me scream at the top of my lungs?"
          -Big Wreck, "That Song"

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