Week 32: Missing Flash Drives and Memory Lane Therapy

After a week of working 4am's, getting a full night's sleep last night was heavenly. I don't know how people that regularly begin their day at 4am do it. They say your body adjusts to it, but I don't know... not mine I guess. All I know for sure is that there is no way I could work that shift long term.

as you may have ascertained today was my day off, and if you didn't, well now you know I guess. It was a glorious day of doing absolutely nothing, at least nothing that I had to think too much about. Sometimes it's nice to just be able to sit back and not have to think. You know? Am I right?

It's been quite a while now since I moved back home from my year at MSU. A little over a year in fact. I distinctly remembered bringing three flash drives home with me in the move, but of course could not recall where I had stowed them upon getting home. Let me remind you, more often then I'd like to admit my memory fails me. The point here, is that I've been missing these flash drives since about the time that I moved home, but I knew that they made the move with me because I distinctly remembered packing them to make the trip home.

I have remembered them off and on over the course of the past year, vaguely noting to myself that I was sure that they were here, and also that each of them was loaded with information that I wasn't really interested in losing. You know, stories and poetry, essays, music back-ups, photos... those sorts of things. The drive I was most interested in finding was the one with all the things that I have written/am in the middle of writing.

There are YEARS worth of writing on that drive. It would be no small tragedy for me to lose it, because stupidly, that data isn't stored anywhere else.

So yeah, I cared that I hadn't been able to locate these drives, but determined that I didn't care enough to go to the trouble of really undertaking a search for them. That is, until today, because what the hay, I had the day off.

Early this afternoon I began my search.

I began by sifting through the boxes at the top of my closet, which to be honest, I should have known that would be a fruitless search because it wasn't all that long ago that I went through and organized them all. Had these drives been in any of those boxes, I would have found them a couple of months ago. But I looked anyway.

This of course led to me coming across a box full of cards that I have received over the years. Birthday cards, Christmas cards, Thank you cards, Thinking of you cards... I have a plethora of cards. Is this strange? Do you hold onto the cards that people send you?

Even though I don't often look over them, I still like to keep them, just in case I might ever like to look at them, because sometimes I do. Sometimes I like to lose myself to a moment of nostalgia, to take a moment and reflect on where I've been in relation to where I am. When I find myself feeling like I'm stuck in a stand-still it's important for me to look back to see how far I've come in order to remind myself how far I have to go. When I was younger I used to feel stuck in a stand still a lot, so when I start to feel that way now I can remember those times and remind myself that it takes time to move forward and I just have to be patient even if that hard to do, especially when that's hard to do.

So, right. The flash drives where not in my closet. So I moved on to my filing cabinet. This has a ton of stuff that I've filed away from Elementary-High school as well as the mission trips that I have participated in. Once again, it was time to take a moment to traverse memory lane. But like I said, for me, moments like this are therapeutic.

Going through my "files" also gave me an idea of what to do with all of my cards. At one point in time, for some purpose now unknown, I bought a mini binder and mini plastic sleeves. I unearthed this bind in my hunt for my flash drives and it just clicked, that binder is the perfect size for cards!

At some point in the fairly near future I plan to organize my cards into binders. A kind of card scrapbook/ memory thing. It's a step up from storage in a box at the top of my closet anyway... Searching through my closet and filing cabinet took most of my afternoon, and though I wouldn't call it completely fruitless, I did not find what I had ultimately been looking for.

Rather than search further though, I took a break, and I told you all of that, so that I could tell you this... I FOUND THEM! About a half an hour or so ago I decided it was time to sit down and blog, and that I was going to tell you all about my failure to locate these flash drives, but before I sat down to write I took a second look at a cabinet I have hanging near my door. I had looked at the tin that I have sitting in this cabinet earlier today, and considered looking in there for the drives, but then discounted that idea. Why would I have put them in there?

Indeed, why did I put them in there? I have no idea. I will never know, except that I did and that is where I found them. My advice? Never make assumptions, if you think you put something somewhere, check it out no matter how crazy you think it would be for you to have placed it there, because that's probably where it is.

Oh, and just to dispel the elephant in the room, no I did not blog last week. Yes, I was supposed to, and I have no excuse for not following through last week. I will try to do better in the coming weeks.

I'll talk to you soon.

Language Barrier

I didn’t just get home from work. I was at work, but I’ve been home for a little while. Actually, I nearly forgot to post this, so things are going to be a little bit down to the wire this evening. Not that this is unusual…

So, as I said I was at work. At one point a group of people came through my department speaking French amongst themselves. This was fine, although it’s always a little disconcerting because in this situation do you greet them? Do you say “Hello”? Do they speak or understand English? There is no way to know. I just smiled and left it at that.

At any rate they were looking over the night lights that we sell, and they seemed to be moving on. Then one of the men from their group came over to get my attention. He had a question, and he posed that question in French. It became clear quickly that he didn’t speak any English whatsoever, whether he understood English I have no idea, but he certainly didn’t speak it.

Why didn’t I pay more attention in French class?

I assumed that he probably wanted a particular one in a box and asked him if that was what he wanted. He shook his head and said something in French. I of course was lost at this point.

Luckily his friend, who spoke some English, came over and translated for me. Apparently he was wondering something about adapters for European plugs. Beyond this I don’t know specifically what he wanted. I could only respond so far as to say that we don’t sell such adaptors and that I imagine that such an adaptor would be needed overseas.

It was interesting, and yet not all that uncommon.

Abandoned Projects

I finally got around to cleaning my desk today. Not only did I clear off the mass of papers, books, and candy that was sprawled across the top of it, but I finally organized the shelves. I ended up throwing out a bunch of papers that I have no idea why I ever saved, and I even found some things that I had believed that I had lost.

For instance, nearly two years ago now I graduated from high school. During one of my friends grad parties a group of us came up with the rough outline of this story. We took notes and everything. I had believed that I’d lost the notes, and surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, I stumbled across them today.

Apparently I’d stowed them away with some of the other writing projects that I’ve begun and abandoned. As I recall I actually did begin writing the story that those notes were meant for. Now I’ll have to go searching around in my files for the portion of that story that I’ve actually written…

Confessions

How did I reach this cross-roads? Sometimes I feel so lost. Sometimes I’m not certain that I really know what it is that I’m looking to achieve. There are times where it feels like all I do is look for ways to help other people. So much of my time is given to making sure that other people are taken care of…

There are times that I wish I would just stop caring. Why do I have to be such a bleeding heart all of the time? Is it so wrong to want to be a little selfish once and while? The logical answer I want to give is no, it’s not so wrong to want to consider yourself every once and a while but the guilt of that idea is so over powering.

What do I have to feel guilty for? Why do I feel so guilty? I want to sleep, I want give the thoughts that are hindering my ability to sleep a rest. I want to sink into the oblivion of thoughtless, dreamless sleep but it’s being illusive tonight.

What I want above all else to feel this weight lift from my shoulders. I want to stop feeling burdened by the things I cannot control. But I don’t know how to do that, I don’t know how to relinquish these feelings. I have no idea how to let go and breathe. How do you let go? Where is peace and how can I garner it?

I feel like I’m letting everyone down, I always feel like I’m letting everyone down…