When ephemera isn't...

[llcoolvad]

I have been feeling nostalgic this week and so I decided to dive into a huge box of stuff I've been dragging around for at least a decade. And boy! I am even more nostalgic now. The stuff in the box goes back to the mid-80s.

I kept EVERYTHING from my past. Everything. Flyers from shows I went to on campus. SF convention programs. Endless goofy letters I wrote to people and never mailed (that file folder is something like four inches thick!!). Equally goofy letters I got from people. Odd art projects. Other people's odd art projects. Letters where my friends yelled at me for being an asshole. Letters where I yelled at my friends for being assholes. A couple letters from various external entities yelling at me for being an asshole — my favorite, on a 3x5 note card that was pinned to my front door, written in painfully precise cursive: "Dear Tenant: Surprise us and pay your past due rent." Ooops!

I even found a photograph of myself that I have no recollection of posing for (I was traveling as a manager of a book fair, and I was in Baltimore on Thanksgiving in 1990. I went to T-day dinner with my trainer, who was a casual friend, and I guess we posed for a picture!). I was a lot blonder then. Thinner too.

Regarding my letters: I doodled a lot. I quoted song lyrics endlessly. I capitalized oddly. I suffered from goofy-spell. Sometimes my penmanship was lovely. Other times it looked like a ten-year-old epileptic was at the helm. I used anything I had on hand for paper: I have long letters I wrote on flower wrap, paper napkins, 3x5 pink slips of paper, 11x17 paper, the backs of flyers, little tiny bits of construction paper, and in every color of paper and every color pen. And that's just the stuff I never sent. God only knows what my friends received (if, indeed, they received anything, because judging by the sheer volume of stuff I have, I can't imagine that a lot of it got a stamp and went away).

I am horrified at the number of people I received cards from or letters from or (yes, this is true) wedding invitations from that I simply don't remember at all. At. All. How does that happen? You know someone well enough that they invite you to their wedding and/or baby shower, but 20 years later you can't place the name? Bad.

I haven't digested all of this to come up with any kind of conclusion. Am I a different person now? Should that make me glad, or sad? After looking at the number of letters that began with "I'm sitting on the bus right now BORED OUT OF MY MIND," I probably should re-investigate the possibility that I have ADHD. Should I burn it all and forget my past? It's tempting. I'm forgetful enough that it will all fade into rosy-colored dimness again fairly quickly. I could forget being an asshole! I could forget being pissed at my friends! I could forget just how many housemates I've had and just how many times I've had to argue with someone about washing the dishes!

But at least it's all pretty interesting! I should have some funky dreams tonight.

Comments

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

A lot of notes between my best friend and me in high school go on and on about how bored we are. However, I'm not ADHD. I might even be the opposite. Oh, sure, I forget stuff and have plenty of the other symptoms that everyone else has. But I also can sit still for a very long time and I work better with long stretches at one thing rather than with flitting from thing to thing.

The one thing I miss about not writing letters by hand anymore is all the doodles, multiple colors and other visual silliness that's just too hard on the computer. Mostly I feel that the quickness of the computer more than compensates, but not always.

[llcoolvad.livejournal.com]

At work I am a complete multitasker. I always have IM sessions open, and I usually am listening to music, chatting with a coworker or two, working on something, and occasionally checking email or the Internet all at the same time. I like to break my day up into chunks, too, working on one project for a while, then moving over to another. I think it's because my projects aren't very interesting, so I need a break from the tedium. Probably not ADHD, either, but I am certainly stimulation-needy. It's a good thing my job demands that kind of thing.

I agree with you about snail mail and the doodling and so forth. I had diagrams! Cartoons! Process maps! Quotations galore. And I find that email just sits in my inbox, unanswered, because it's just not that fun. Plus most of my email these days is of the "How's Sunday? 7pm?" variety. Not exactly memorable.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Wow. How can you bear to keep all that? I shed my past as I go, I only save photos and letters, and since no one's written me a letter since the early 90s there's not much to save. One box, I think.

However, I was never bored. I'm really good at entertaining myself and always have been.

[llcoolvad.livejournal.com]

You couldn't bear to keep it, and I can't bear to let it go! I was a huge letter writer in the 80s and early 90s, so I have tons of stuff. Sort of like a journal from that time. I didn't start keeping a journal until 1989 or so, so this fills in some of the gaps for me. I led a much more complicated life then than I do now (of course!) and I have a pretty bad memory for details. Part of me is tempted to let it go. But I am the child of pack rats, so it's a genetic thing! It's harder than you would think!

Re: boredom. I think it was less that I was actually bored and more that I was restless. If I couldn't find a book to read I'd write a letter or something. I'm sure if I were in my 20s NOW I'd be on my cell phone 24 hours a day, texting and calling and surfing and whatever. It's a good thing I grew up when I did, as I would probably have had a live video feed in my room all through college...

It's funny how we change as we age, though. Now I am content to be completely alone almost all the time.