A Trip Down Memory Ln.

Lately I've been really hurting for something to write about. I've been going through old blogs, old pictures, old emails and old journals. Most of it has been fun, some of it has been sad and a lot of it has reminded me of what an absolute dork I am.

Exhibit A.


That was at the height of my pop-punkdom. I at one point seriously believed that I was going to be the lead singer of band called "Kill the Light." I would be the only girl and get my own hotel room on tour. It was going to be awesome.

This is an excerpt from an ENTIRE BOOK of song lyrics. I believe it was written circa 1999:
"that's alright, that's ok
just don't expect to find me sittin' here next saturday."

May I just remind you that aside from a few guitar chords, I don't play an instrument so this entire book isn't really full of songs as much as really, really bad poetry.

This journal goes up until late 2002. Around this time I started college and continued writing bad poetry. I also started a live journal that in retrospect was really just documenting my social ineptitude and various college crushes and relationships which, at the time, seemed like the be all, end all.

A sampling:
"so i've been selected to tell the girl that used to live here but now has her own place and is still here anyway that she has to leave. she leaves huge piles of grease on the stove. she left a cup of bacon fat for three days in the sink and everyday she side-hugs me and says in a half-whisper "hey roommie."

and

"my house smells like cheap vodka and in order to take a shower, everyone has to remove beer cans from the bathtub. and the cops were here last night. and i feel so bad for my neighbors i am hiding in my house even though i am starving and there is nothing to eat."

Then, in 2005, I backpacked around Europe before finally ending up in London to study. This journal starts with about two weeks of me being painfully, horribly homesick in various Western European cities.

Then I landed in London and wrote "It's shocking how much I hate Jack Johnson. He should be arrested and ordered to never make music again. This is solely to protect frat boys and Australians." As of right now, I believe this revelation is the pinnacle of my life and it will all be downhill from here. I loved London immediately and sort of stopped writing cause I was having the time of life.

I returned to school and the last year of college is journaled through a small notebook where I just wrote down things the people around me said.

For example:
"oh god, i love dunkin' donuts. their donuts are great. (long pause)*
you know what's amazing? they're always so fresh! oh god, boston creme! jelly! chocolate cake! they're all so good."
*i actually wrote (long pause)

The rest of the journals talk about a friend of mine who passed away and the sudden realization that I was becoming an adult.

Then in summer 2006 I set off on a cross-country road trip with a very good friend of mine who, despite our best efforts on the trip, remains a very good friend. During this trip I attempted to write a journal that everyone could read without me being embarrassed (i.e I left out the poetry) I did however come up with a list of things that I learned along the way. They are peppered throughout the journal however here I collected them all together:
1. There is pretty much a McDonalds everywhere.
2. No matter how much you love music, 7 days in a car is all it takes to make you seriously consider the quiet solitude of monastic life.
3. The entire state of Texas is backwards (this is what we call "foreshadowing"). There are strip clubs next to churches that condemn stripping on their billboards. The capital, Austin, despises the rest of the state and probably wouldn't mind ceding from it. Texas also produced Bush, is longer than Hell and twice as hot.
4. Just when you think you've seen the most vile restroom in the Western world, you walk into the next one. (I've actually had a flying cockroach land on me in TWO separate bathrooms. It's the only two times I've seen a flying cockroach.)
5. Man cannot live on Diet Coke alone. (We subsisted on Diet Coke, string cheese & Budweiser)
6. No matter how much you like someone, you run out of things to talk about in Nevada.
7. San Francisco smells like urine, has more panhandlers than Rome has gypsies and hills that give me shin splints. (I had a bad first impression of San Fran, something that has yet to be rectified)
8. Formerly endearing mannerisms often compose the short lists of reasons you never want to see your travel partner's face ever again (a slight exaggeration as I still love my travel partner. Although she did move across the country from me... coincidence?)

So that's a little sampling of some things I've written over the last ten (TEN!!!!) years.