So about those letters...
And other things. My desk drawers are now completely empty, and my floor is in a state of organized mess. A pile of stuff to throw away, a pile of stuff to give to my parents to see if they want (and for them to throw away if they don't), a pile of stuff to give to Goodwill (or someone), a pile of stuff that I want to keep (actually fairly small, go me), and a pile of stuff I'm not sure what to do with.
It's that last that's giving me trouble (naturally). It's a mixture of old letters and old writings - largely for classes high school and before, but all the same. Some of it I'll no doubt go ahead and toss. After a while, when I came up with bunches of folders and notebooks, I just started putting them in a stack to go through later. Some of it's incomplete work, and some of it I have no idea what it is. But there's a good bit of old creative writing (even if it is creative writing to some constricted assignment) and a couple of journals. And then there are letters.
I suppose the question really is, how important is it to me to remember these people? The people who wrote me letters, the person I used to be. I'm already starting to forget some. The few things I did re-read before I just started my stack shows that. But...is it important? I've been getting along just fine not remembering or mis-remembering. Not to mention the fact that I've probably only got so much storage space upstairs, and do I really want to spend in on people with whom I've long since lost all connection? Which I guess comes back to my own writings. Is it important to me to remember who I was? I don't know. A lot of times I don't want to because who I was makes me cringe. A lot of my old writings make me cringe. But then again, how much can you really expect from a seventh grader who isn't a prodigy? I wasn't. But my own personality also makes me cringe, setting aside the writings. On the other hand...just because I make myself cringe doesn't mean it's not important to remember myself and the people that mattered to me then. Of course, it doesn't mean it is important, either. I don't know. More practically speaking, I also know that I probably wouldn't re-read all this stuff with any regularity anyway. After all, I haven't for years. So even if I do believe it's important to me to remember, keeping all this stuff wouldn't necessarily ensure that I would. I would probably carry them with me and then not look at them again 'til I was moving again.
Is that enough? Or should I simply hold a wake for myself now, read them, remember, and bury them? I remember Matt posting here about how just before he went to college he went through all his old high school papers and burned them, slowly, piece by piece. I felt a little like that as I was going through my drawers, like I was...purging the clutter of my mind. I wasn't, really, my mind is still plenty cluttered, but...it felt good.
Maybe I won't keep them.
It's that last that's giving me trouble (naturally). It's a mixture of old letters and old writings - largely for classes high school and before, but all the same. Some of it I'll no doubt go ahead and toss. After a while, when I came up with bunches of folders and notebooks, I just started putting them in a stack to go through later. Some of it's incomplete work, and some of it I have no idea what it is. But there's a good bit of old creative writing (even if it is creative writing to some constricted assignment) and a couple of journals. And then there are letters.
I suppose the question really is, how important is it to me to remember these people? The people who wrote me letters, the person I used to be. I'm already starting to forget some. The few things I did re-read before I just started my stack shows that. But...is it important? I've been getting along just fine not remembering or mis-remembering. Not to mention the fact that I've probably only got so much storage space upstairs, and do I really want to spend in on people with whom I've long since lost all connection? Which I guess comes back to my own writings. Is it important to me to remember who I was? I don't know. A lot of times I don't want to because who I was makes me cringe. A lot of my old writings make me cringe. But then again, how much can you really expect from a seventh grader who isn't a prodigy? I wasn't. But my own personality also makes me cringe, setting aside the writings. On the other hand...just because I make myself cringe doesn't mean it's not important to remember myself and the people that mattered to me then. Of course, it doesn't mean it is important, either. I don't know. More practically speaking, I also know that I probably wouldn't re-read all this stuff with any regularity anyway. After all, I haven't for years. So even if I do believe it's important to me to remember, keeping all this stuff wouldn't necessarily ensure that I would. I would probably carry them with me and then not look at them again 'til I was moving again.
Is that enough? Or should I simply hold a wake for myself now, read them, remember, and bury them? I remember Matt posting here about how just before he went to college he went through all his old high school papers and burned them, slowly, piece by piece. I felt a little like that as I was going through my drawers, like I was...purging the clutter of my mind. I wasn't, really, my mind is still plenty cluttered, but...it felt good.
Maybe I won't keep them.