Friday, January 8, 2016

Xanga Nostalgia

A friend posted on Facebook about her day off and how she was bombarded by solicitors at home that don't sell girl scout cookies. I remembered an old comic strip about religious solicitors that I shared on my blog awhile back and wanted to find that specific image.

So I fired up my dying 4 year old external hard drive to find the picture. Instead, I found my archived Xanga posts and photos. Even better.

It was no use. Clicking on the html files shows the bare writing without my original Xanga layouts. So that reminded me of the Wayback Machine.

I searched for my original Xanga URL - xanga.com/stupid_systemus. The earliest archived post was from 2005. This is what it looked like...


This perfectly sums up what I'm going through now. The Wayback Machine only took a few snapshots of my Xanga, but it was enough for me to binge on nostalgia. I 've always prided myself in having near perfect recollection of past events, but I've read accredited claims that when you remember past events, you're actually remembering the last time you remembered it. So I either have perfect recollection or my memory of past events keep changing.

Going through my posts, I imagined what I was like at the time.

Why I wrote that post...
Why I chose that layout...
Who commented the most on my posts...
How I wrote the way I did...
Was I generally happy, sad...
Was I hiding something...
What happened to me now...

In 2005, my subscribers were mostly college friends. My updates detailed college courses, weekend activities and sharing stuff I found online. That time period was formative for most people new to blogging... or the Internet for that matter. We were still trying to find our online identity/persona... or ourselves. My awkward phase in high school didn't really prepare me to much socializing online and off. I'm ways better now at public speaking and witty banter. Still, speaking is not as suave as the articulated mind.

At the moment, I feel like everything is at a standstill. I'm going through the motions of life... wake up, shower, get dressed, work, lunch with co-workers, head out, shopping, home, dinner, TV/Internet, sleep... repeat. I enjoy the company of my co-workers. At times, I feel so disconnected. It's as if everybody else has their life all mapped out. I had lunch with my co-workers at the office lunch room and I caught myself zoning out. Physically, I was there, but my mind was elsewhere.

Not to cheapen the experience of loss, I went through the same thing for a year after my break up 7 years ago. At the same time, my mind is probably exaggerating everything. It is, after all, past 2 AM (HIMYM reference). Time for some shut eyes.

I'm done.

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