Digital History
taken at Marina Beach Reserve in October 2011
I'm not really one to talk about purging history.
I quite literally have shoe boxes of cards, ticket stubs, and receipts hidden in my bedroom at my parent's house. I blame my mom. Ever since we were little - or I guess as long as we were pre-College - she saved mementos of our academic (and summer) years. They were called memory boxes and I feel like we bought them from Lillian Vernon. It was just that kind of thing.
I used to sit on the floor of the cedar closet where we kept them and would pull out a year and look at what was inside. I had a fondness for seeing my old report cards and what the teachers had to say about me... probably the root of my lifetime quest for gold stars. Whatever.
As we get older, and life becomes more and more digital, it becomes so much easier to do this. My Google account is essentially my memory box from Spring 2005 to current date. I've lost my "digital history" a few times - but never with the Goog, rather with old work emails or lost cell phones. I felt so attached to those bits of history. I felt so compelled to take care of those text messages or emails despite knowing that I wasn't attached to those relationships anymore. I wonder why we do that? I think it's probably the same reason that I like to read my old blog posts. (Is that narcissistic? I don't care)
But, I think we need to be careful with history. It's a tricky mistress. History is only good if we don't get wrapped up in it and forget all the lessons that we learned. It's a double edged sword - history can teach us lessons but at the same time keep us from learning them. I’ve been working on learning this myself.
I guess that's the moral of the story for the day.
Why all the thinking you ask? Well, it’s my blogaversary and my 400th post... this (blog) baby has just turned two years old. Amazing all the things that I've felt okay sharing with the interwebs for a person that never successfully kept a diary during her formative awkward teenage years. I was chatting with my friend Carrie the other day about how the voice of this blog has changed in 399 posts. In the beginning, I mainly wrote to be “funny” or perhaps vent about something I thought was absurd. Somewhere before I hit #200, I began to feel more comfortable sharing my daily activities and interests. But it was in #300, that I declared that I was forever a Bostonian and officially needed to not live in a Hilton.
As the blog has evolved, I think I’ve evolved too. I know more and more what makes me tick and what I want from life. I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty great. I'm more comfortable in my own skin than ever. I want to continue to take adventures, cook to my hearts content, stretch my wings with new challenges, and maybe just maybe share some of these adventures with a like-minded individual. The like minded-individual will have an affinity for fleece, the ocean, bacon, and believes in holding hands. That person will also give me all the really good lime Tostitos chips because they are my favorite.
In the mean time, I'm going to keep falling in love with the North End, visiting the seals at the Aquarium, and drinking wine in my bed.
Happy 400 blog post to me.
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