On The Verge of Tears

We often say “I’ll never forget.”  It could refer to a hilarious time you and a few friends got drunk and did something ridiculous that will live in infamy within your crowd.  Perhaps it refers to a unique moment between two people who have experienced some life changing event together.

We try to clutch to memories because they are so pleasant to remember.  But, like bad times in our lives, even the good memories fade away.  We don’t do the things that remind us of them anymore.  We don’t see the same people that reminisce with us anymore.  Life goes on and things change.  Eventually, even the most emotionally amazing memories are only thought about once every few years, and then they die.

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I guess that’s a reason people keep journals, or in my case, a blog.  But, in a very weird sense, journals are sometimes more about processing than remembering, like a dream.  And I think it’s curious that I’ve always written in my journal with the idea that it would be someone else reading them in the future and not me.  In a sense, it was a running documentary of my life, not for me to relive, because I’ve already been there, but for someone else to read and think, “wow, this guy had an amazing, and sometimes terrible, life.”

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All of my journals, my pictures, my love letters from all of my girlfriends, old trophies, posters, patches, pennants…all of that stuff I keep in trunks and buckets in my attack.  Occasionally I take a peak, but not really. And, I’ve never felt it was appropriate to show that stuff to any friends or even my wife.  I always thought my journals would be something that someone discovered after I died, and would sit down and read and be thankful that I wrote all the things I wrote.

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But things do change, and the internet came along, and now I have this blog.  And, it’s an amazing sense that I feel when I know writing this stuff down gets immediately consumed by interested people.  I’m glad to share all these thoughts and crazy times with the people that read my blog.  I try to live my life every single day as if it might be one of my last and in a way, I think I use this blog to try to prove to myself and others that I have.

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Perhaps it’s a bit pessimistic that I need to reassure myself I’ve lived a great life, had a great time, but heh…we’ve all got issues.  One of the best side effects of writing this blog, though, is that it’s served to be my memory bank.  I won’t remember all the things I’ve written about forever, but they’ll exist here for a very long time, and I, or anyone else in the world, can check back into the history of my life whenever we want.

cheers to another year of future memories...