11.06.2003 - 3:49 p.m.

My father sent me two zip files full of stuff from my old hard drive, the one that used to be in the computer that now belongs to my brother. All the files are in lotus when my life since then has been in word, so I haven't been able to read any of it in oh, two years or so.

It's amazing how well your brain can camouflage a time in your memory; I remember being unhappy for the last semester or so of college. But I seem to recall that I got much better when I graduated, that the change in situation and independence had almost instantly improved my outlook.

Well, those files from the old computer date as much as six, seven months after leaving school. A fairly typical sample:

"Somewhere dark and smooth and unbreathable is a truth I wish I wasn't looking for."

So someone was depressed, and it certainly wasn't my cat.

And besides the creative writing, there was an archive of all my college papers, too. Most I don't even recognize as my own, and what I can say about them has very little to do with their content. This one was on the screen when we had that fire drill. I got the idea for this in that awful shower in the dorm, the one that never let out the right pressure. That paper was awful and I didn't care, although I did care that I didn't care. That one was the best argument I've ever made.

In the social aftermath of a meeting this morning, I was telling a colleague how I'd once thought I needed professional goals, but that the older I got the less it seemed to matter. I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've ever used the phrase "the older I get" in reference to myself. Two years from now, I might think I was in a good place, or I might remember this as a hard year. There've been elements of both. It can't matter much which I decide, since it'll all be in the past anyway.

It's probably very silly of me to want to get it right.

-stonebridge

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