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.

Connections

I enjoy my JRN 200 class, it's the paranoia that it leaves me with that I could do without. I am taking a break from the assignment that it due no later than eleven, to blog, because if I stare at the mock obituary I've managed to write, I may go insane. Omar was talking in class today, about how he wants us all to be able to write something and by the time we are finished with it be certain that what we've turned in is the best that we could have done.

This is something that I find myself struggling with. I think the interesting thing about writing, is that no matter what you're writing it's never really finished. Given an infinite amount of time, a writer continually alter, and polish any given piece of writing. This process is only interrupted because of deadlines which are often both necessary and daunting.

Hopefully I will be able to focus on polishing up my 'story', once I've written this up. Breaks are good things.

On a completely different note... Over the last couple days my oldest niece has really been on my mind. Specifically, I keep going back and mentally picturing the day that she was born. I was five at the time, and my brother was four. I remember that she was so tiny, and when I was asked if I wanted to hold her I was so scared that I would drop her. She looked so fragile.

Eventually it was worked out that Shawn and I would share one of the hospital chairs, and hold her together. The memory is vague in detail, but it's so strong in my mind. Anyway, it's been on my mind a lot lately, and today I learned that she's going through a bit of a struggle.

I just thought it was interesting that she's been on my mind so much lately, and it happened to correspond with this event back at home. It's amazing how connected we can be with people that we love, even when we are separated by substantial distances.

Scars

I was a fairly clumsy child.

At our former house, we had a pool in the back yard. At around age three I managed to fall into that pool. It’s a vague memory. I can recall sinking to the bottom, sitting cross-legged on the pools ‘floor’. We were having a family dinner that day, and thankfully one of my cousin’s dove in and retrieved me. I can recall that there was a lot of fuss over the whole thing, but that’s where the memory ends.

In our backyard, we also had this area that was essentially a dirt pit where we used to play. We had a swing set in this dirt pit that wasn’t particularly fastened down. A year or so after the pool incident my younger brother, older cousin and I were playing around the swing set. I don’t remember who was swinging, but it wasn’t me, because one leg of it lifted up and when it came back down my thumb was in the way. I still have the scar from that fiasco on the thumb of my left hand.

In the same time frame, we were over to my grandparents for a family dinner. I don’t remember which holiday it was, but that’s irrelevant. My slightly younger cousin, younger brother, and I were running through the house. In true klutz fashion I wasn’t paying any attention to where I was going and ran smack-dab into the doorjamb of the next room. Brilliant, I know. That scar is fairly faint, but it’s still there on the left side of my forehead.

I’m lucky to have made it to the age of five, let alone twenty. :D

To Remember

Today was a lovely day, even though I spent it at work. I was able to keep super busy, so it didn’t seem like a long day, which was awesome. Mostly I spent the day cleaning, but that wasn’t so bad. I like to stay busy. The way I see it, is that they are paying me to work so I’m going to work, anything less than that is equivalent to a waste of my time.

As of tonight I will be a week ahead in my Shakespeare class. I’m hoping to manage to keep that status up so that maybe I won’t feel like I’m always under such a time crunch. Of course, it would help if I wouldn’t wait so late to post on this blog. I seriously almost forgot to post tonight, and worst part is that I was thinking about needing to post on my drive home from work.

Short term memory ftw.

False Appearance

I can remember my first grade self vaguely. I’ve always been a quite person, but that never stopped me from standing up for myself. I had this friend that year, who would periodically threaten not to be my friend for inane reasons. Usually it was because I didn’t want to play the same games that she did during recess.

When I would disagree with her she would threaten not to be my friend unless I agreed, and rather than cave in I would tell her that was fine. Whatever.

The funny thing is, by the time recess was over she would always come back and say she was sorry, and oh could we be friends again. I would always agree, I would forgive and “forget” as it were. There are those that would say my continual forgiveness is evidence of a failure on my part to be assertive, but I don’t think that’s true.

I think the more important thing about this memory is my reaction to her initial threat. What did it matter to me if she didn’t want to be my friend? As far as I was concerned I didn’t need her to be my friend if she didn’t want to be.

Needless to say I lost contact with her after that year, which isn’t surprising since I switched schools and I believe she moved out of the area. In fact, all I remember of her is that her name was Yvonne, and of course the above anecdote.

But this is all to prove my point, which may in fact prove pointless. My point, is that sometimes appearances don’t always paint the full picture. You can believe that you know someone and in reality not have the slightest idea who they really are. I may not always seem to be the most assertive person, but what seems to be isn’t always the truth.