There are days, like today, when I wake up, and suddenly realize that I have been living here for four years.
This may not sound like a legendary announcement.
Allow me to explain.
Routine. Alarm, gym, coffee, shower, throwing lunch in a bag, out the door, traffic, parking, rushing, booting, reading, answering, calling, reading, answering, calling, reading, answering, calling, meeting, eating, re-booting, reading, reading, reading, answering, answering, calling, meeting, meeting, reading, reading, traffic, parking, snack, cleaning, errands, dinner, reading, bed, STOP. REPEAT. You get caught up in this cycle.
Of course there are breaks. There are dinners, luxurious mornings of sleeping in, long runs, delicious treats, family, friends, boyfriend, cats, breakfasts, lunches, happy hours, films, books, festivals, travel. These are the things you remember the most, however, and the other days just seemed to get sucked into the tornado of routine, if it can be described as such.
The things I remember most are high highs and low lows. The everyday mundane tends to get swept under the rug, and it is moments like these that I am eternally grateful that I keep journals diligently. If not for this compulsion, we would all be devoid of gems such as this:
July 23, 2003
Denmark, Maine
Summer Job - camp counselor
2011 comments in italics
7:56am- Wake up.
8:00am - Breakfast. (Remember the days when you could wake up and be somewhere in four minutes? Like college. Strong prerequisite: not giving a shit what you look like when you roll in somewhere.)
9:00am - Stables, watched K8 (my nickname for one of my British friends, who is still a good friend of mine, and whom I still refer to as K8) ride new horse.
9:30am - Bunk inspections. Hadn't done them in over a week, but higher powers finally caught on and confronted me at breakfast. Foiled.
10:00am- Cleaned our room. Discovered beds are slightly more bearable with only one mattress instead of two. (Ahhhh, camp beds. For an entire summer, we lived on squishy, tissue-thin mattresses on military cots. With no air conditioning.) Got clean sheets for once - am tired of sleeping in own filth. (I went through a Bridget Jones-phase of writing in my journals. This lasted approximately four and a half years, and immensely entertained me.)
10:30am - Nap. Hungover from drinking in the C______ House (a run-down shack further down in the woods where all of the counselors snuck off to after the kids were asleep to drink Natty Lite and listen to music on someone's shitty boombox. Totally the stuff of horror movies.) Must make 34 costumes. Am very stressed. Solution - nap. I miss the cat. (I was in charge of costumes and set design for the camp's theater program. Sushi, who was only about a year old at the time, lived with my parents that summer. I think they still miss him.)
Someday...I shall post more journal entries. There is a statute of limitations in what I feel is appropriate to post, but I will admit that the Bridget Jones years are points of hilarity in a long history of melodramatic journal entries that read like Danielle Steele novels. (My mother once pointed out that my writing - MY EARLIER WRITING, I WOULD LIKE TO CLARIFY - was reminiscent of Danielle Steele. I am still not over this comment. I may need therapy.)
Journalling has been my constant compulsion. I once made Snap promise that, in the event of my untimely death, she was to immediately round up any and all journals in my estate (as if I have anything that would constitute an "estate" beyond a car lacking working shocks and two fairly brain-damaged cats) and lock them away. She - and only she - had full permission to weed through, decide what would be too humiliating for public visage, and post the remaining entries online. If she could find any that aren't too humiliating, that is. I have a tendency to...well...have literary diarrhea in my journals. Probably about that caliber of writing, too.
This may not sound like a legendary announcement.
Allow me to explain.
Routine. Alarm, gym, coffee, shower, throwing lunch in a bag, out the door, traffic, parking, rushing, booting, reading, answering, calling, reading, answering, calling, reading, answering, calling, meeting, eating, re-booting, reading, reading, reading, answering, answering, calling, meeting, meeting, reading, reading, traffic, parking, snack, cleaning, errands, dinner, reading, bed, STOP. REPEAT. You get caught up in this cycle.
Of course there are breaks. There are dinners, luxurious mornings of sleeping in, long runs, delicious treats, family, friends, boyfriend, cats, breakfasts, lunches, happy hours, films, books, festivals, travel. These are the things you remember the most, however, and the other days just seemed to get sucked into the tornado of routine, if it can be described as such.
The things I remember most are high highs and low lows. The everyday mundane tends to get swept under the rug, and it is moments like these that I am eternally grateful that I keep journals diligently. If not for this compulsion, we would all be devoid of gems such as this:
July 23, 2003
Denmark, Maine
Summer Job - camp counselor
2011 comments in italics
7:56am- Wake up.
8:00am - Breakfast. (Remember the days when you could wake up and be somewhere in four minutes? Like college. Strong prerequisite: not giving a shit what you look like when you roll in somewhere.)
9:00am - Stables, watched K8 (my nickname for one of my British friends, who is still a good friend of mine, and whom I still refer to as K8) ride new horse.
9:30am - Bunk inspections. Hadn't done them in over a week, but higher powers finally caught on and confronted me at breakfast. Foiled.
10:00am- Cleaned our room. Discovered beds are slightly more bearable with only one mattress instead of two. (Ahhhh, camp beds. For an entire summer, we lived on squishy, tissue-thin mattresses on military cots. With no air conditioning.) Got clean sheets for once - am tired of sleeping in own filth. (I went through a Bridget Jones-phase of writing in my journals. This lasted approximately four and a half years, and immensely entertained me.)
10:30am - Nap. Hungover from drinking in the C______ House (a run-down shack further down in the woods where all of the counselors snuck off to after the kids were asleep to drink Natty Lite and listen to music on someone's shitty boombox. Totally the stuff of horror movies.) Must make 34 costumes. Am very stressed. Solution - nap. I miss the cat. (I was in charge of costumes and set design for the camp's theater program. Sushi, who was only about a year old at the time, lived with my parents that summer. I think they still miss him.)
Someday...I shall post more journal entries. There is a statute of limitations in what I feel is appropriate to post, but I will admit that the Bridget Jones years are points of hilarity in a long history of melodramatic journal entries that read like Danielle Steele novels. (My mother once pointed out that my writing - MY EARLIER WRITING, I WOULD LIKE TO CLARIFY - was reminiscent of Danielle Steele. I am still not over this comment. I may need therapy.)
Journalling has been my constant compulsion. I once made Snap promise that, in the event of my untimely death, she was to immediately round up any and all journals in my estate (as if I have anything that would constitute an "estate" beyond a car lacking working shocks and two fairly brain-damaged cats) and lock them away. She - and only she - had full permission to weed through, decide what would be too humiliating for public visage, and post the remaining entries online. If she could find any that aren't too humiliating, that is. I have a tendency to...well...have literary diarrhea in my journals. Probably about that caliber of writing, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment