Tabula Rasa

[trickykitty]

Back in high school I used to read and write quite a lot. I was never long without a reading book or a spiral notebook and pen in hand. The stuff I wrote was nothing more than angsty musings or the occasional quote from a good book that I liked. The personal writings smacked of Deep Thoughts(tm), and maybe there was some sort of deeper meaning in it all, but the world will never know. By my early 20's I was tired of it all. I had been holding on to these writings as though somehow these thoughts would transcend all that was and ever would be, and my thoughts would be published as the most profound existential work ever created. (bleh) I gave over a couple of boxes filled with spiral notebooks and binders of notebook paper to a trusted friend and had him destroy them.

There was one original poem in there based on a drug-induced hallucination that I had the same night I totaled my first car. Having that destroyed with the batch was a mistake. Everything else, I don't miss one bit. I kept one spiral notebook that has mostly other people's poems and quotes in it, and just a couple of original writings, both based on dreams. Aside from my diaries that I kept, that is all that's left of the writings.

It was an interesting catharsis I went through, letting all those writings go. Letting all the teenage angst go.

Throughout my years I seemed to thrive on these moments in time. I was constantly rearranging my room. That was before the internet started to limit the placement of my computer and, by extension, my desk. Multiple times I completely gutted my closet of all the toys just to categorically put them all right back in. I recall once putting together all 20+ jigsaw puzzles I owned at the time over the course of a few weeks, and then one afternoon spreading them around my room to look at them all put together simultaneously before scrambling them all back up and putting them away into their respective boxes. I've never asked my parents what they thought of me during all these strange times. They've been surprised more than a few times by my eccentricities, yet never once have I known them to try and stymie my behaviours. My mom says it's nigh impossible for me to be content with a job for much more than a year and a half or so without needing some sort of significant change in the job itself in order to keep my stimulation and attention. Even working at one YMCA location for 9 years included changes in job duties or me creating new processing systems on a semi-regular basis just to keep myself entertained.

I've started another similar process recently. It's a bit more focused and intent than before, but it's still the same process. I'm gradually pulling all my straggling stuff in because it feels way too cluttered.

Heh - I can almost see my desk through all the pens and markers I have lying about. Too bad I forgot to bring the boxes home I meant to snag on my way out the door from work this evening.