August 13, 2014
Last night I read (with permission) my girlfriend’s 3rd grade diary. It was one of the great things I’ve ever place my eyebulbs on. Vibrantly expressing her love of cats and dresses. Proudly listing the names of every stuffed animal she owned on that day. An artist’s rendering of a butt with a tongue on it. The details on paper made me know what it was like to be an 8 year old girl in the 90s.
I then think back to the boxes of school papers and art projects I’ve saved that were created from my offsprings. What time-capsulesque properties they will hold for them and for me. Will they marvel at how well they drew a hand-turkey just 10 years prior?
I watch my 17 year old daughter spew disgust over reading 3 year old Timehops on her phone. Re-living how bummed she was that she was sick, and wondering if she was going to puke just 3 years earlier. “Why would I say that?” she asks.
Then I went back to a 5 year old blogpost. It was expressing my love for In-N-Out burger. I took a photo of my food… and posted it. A now sin I would punish myself via death… by burgers. Oh how times have changed.
I guess I’m just wondering how much we evolve writing-wise on a daily basis. We grow and we mature but how does that relate to the words we use or the style in which we convey them. How many years until I look back at myself today and think what an idiot I was. A decade? A year? After I eat this sandwich? Or will I look back as I did on the diary written by a wide-eyed 8 year old. Will I smile and remember what it was like to love Breaking Bad and Double-Doubles so much? Should we set expiration dates on blogposts? Do we keep them up for an eternity so every few hundred years someone stumbles across our words in a screwed up web-search and learn what it was like to be us, be me for a minute. Maybe an old tweet of mine will make them chuckle.
A legacy in 140 characters or less.
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