(no subject)
This is what happens when you have an hour to waste before The Daily Show. I decided to ramble on about whatever popped into mind. Here's the fruit of my labor:
“I’m going downstairs to start my great American Novel,” When I said it to my sister as she left the house, it was just a joke, but as soon as I decended those stairs and turned into my cavern of a bedroom, I found myself drawn right to the computer. I sat down at the make-shift desk--jerry rigged from moving boxes and an old, broken table no one else in the family would claim--and immediately opened Word. Cueing up music that would settle in the background, I paused to think about what I could possibly write that anyone would want to read.
I mean, what makes me special? I’m an 18-year-old girl, a suburbanite by birth, but a city girl by nature. The youngest of six, I can charm your pants off or make you laugh, but are any of those jokes of any pertinence? I go through phases where each week something different catches my fancy: one month I was Jesus’s best friend, the next I wanted to be a NASCAR driver. My current obsession is politics, which is a pleasant diversion for a three month summer break, especially in the midst of presidential election season, but in September I go back to school, and more likely than not, the world of Kerry-Edwards and foreign policy will be left behind with my old stuffed animals and memorabilia growing dusty in the forgotten corners of my childhood home.
Through 18 years of shifting tastes, very few things have held my interest for long, and my bedroom has become a testament to this fact: paint in boxes under my bed from my starving artist phase I outgrew when I was thirteen, Ray Bradbury books on the shelf from my sci-fi phase, a closet full of slightly outdated fashions from the time I imagined myself a model, and skeins of a rainbow variety of colored yarn waiting to be knitted into sweaters promised to, but never made for, various family members. Each time I moved to a different hobby, I was convinced this was the one--the thing I would be perfect at and spend the rest of my life enjoying. Of course, I’d move on not too much later, leaving behind half-finished projects and barely used tools of each trade in poorly organized boxes.
Funny, but I can’t bring myself to throw away those half-used, dried up paints or to box and donate those books to the library, though I’ll never crack the spines again. To dispose of those relics of my youth would be to get rid of a part of myself, those constant reminders of where I’ve been and, more importantly, who I’ve been. I try to convince myself that one day I’ll dig out my knitting needles and make that afghan for my mother, but even if I do, I know it won’t be the same as it would have been; the giddy delight of my hobby’s former heyday is lost, and while knitting again may be nice, it won’t hold the same wonder it may have had years ago. The problem: I’ve moved on.
But the thing is, even as I’ve aged and graduated to more “sophisticated” interests, I follow the same serial monogamy: discovery of hobby, research of hobby, obsession with hobby, discovery of different hobby, disinterest with old hobby. Strangely, everything in my life follows the same path. I discover a person, or a subject, or anything else, and I become completely immersed in it until I figure it out completely, comprehend its idiosyncrasies, then I grow bored and move on. The friendships I maintain, the hobbies I keep, the interests I continue to feed are those that remain mysterious, those I don’t completely understand. I crave that hidden side, those unanswered questions. I need to know that there is more I don’t know, but may someday know, but until then cannot possibly know. It is not enough for me to be an expert; there must me more for me to discover or I move on to something else.
I carefully, or more often carelessly, box up those old relationships and hobbies and stick them on a high shelf where I can forget about them until I climb up on a ladder while I’m looking for the Christmas decorations. And then, in classic Me style, I take down the box for a peek into my past, an attempt to understand myself better. I may play around with what’s inside, like I may watercolor a picture of my house or read a favorite passage, giving the contents of the box false hope that they will get another day in the sun. But sure enough, the items go back in their confining little home, repacked for the next time I climb that ladder, forgotten until I’m once again ready to remember who I used to be.
But the real question is, what about my self? What if I reach the dead end of the path of self-discovery and truly know myself completely? Will I grow bored with myself and want to move on? Is that why I keep hopping from interest to interest? Is it a redefinition thing, so I never truly know myself, and therefore maintain an interest in myself? The truth: I don’t want to know the answer to the question of self-knowledge. I’m content to remain a mystery to myself, to be my most elusive hobby, refusing to be thrown in a box and shoved on a shelf.
“I’m going downstairs to start my great American Novel,” When I said it to my sister as she left the house, it was just a joke, but as soon as I decended those stairs and turned into my cavern of a bedroom, I found myself drawn right to the computer. I sat down at the make-shift desk--jerry rigged from moving boxes and an old, broken table no one else in the family would claim--and immediately opened Word. Cueing up music that would settle in the background, I paused to think about what I could possibly write that anyone would want to read.
I mean, what makes me special? I’m an 18-year-old girl, a suburbanite by birth, but a city girl by nature. The youngest of six, I can charm your pants off or make you laugh, but are any of those jokes of any pertinence? I go through phases where each week something different catches my fancy: one month I was Jesus’s best friend, the next I wanted to be a NASCAR driver. My current obsession is politics, which is a pleasant diversion for a three month summer break, especially in the midst of presidential election season, but in September I go back to school, and more likely than not, the world of Kerry-Edwards and foreign policy will be left behind with my old stuffed animals and memorabilia growing dusty in the forgotten corners of my childhood home.
Through 18 years of shifting tastes, very few things have held my interest for long, and my bedroom has become a testament to this fact: paint in boxes under my bed from my starving artist phase I outgrew when I was thirteen, Ray Bradbury books on the shelf from my sci-fi phase, a closet full of slightly outdated fashions from the time I imagined myself a model, and skeins of a rainbow variety of colored yarn waiting to be knitted into sweaters promised to, but never made for, various family members. Each time I moved to a different hobby, I was convinced this was the one--the thing I would be perfect at and spend the rest of my life enjoying. Of course, I’d move on not too much later, leaving behind half-finished projects and barely used tools of each trade in poorly organized boxes.
Funny, but I can’t bring myself to throw away those half-used, dried up paints or to box and donate those books to the library, though I’ll never crack the spines again. To dispose of those relics of my youth would be to get rid of a part of myself, those constant reminders of where I’ve been and, more importantly, who I’ve been. I try to convince myself that one day I’ll dig out my knitting needles and make that afghan for my mother, but even if I do, I know it won’t be the same as it would have been; the giddy delight of my hobby’s former heyday is lost, and while knitting again may be nice, it won’t hold the same wonder it may have had years ago. The problem: I’ve moved on.
But the thing is, even as I’ve aged and graduated to more “sophisticated” interests, I follow the same serial monogamy: discovery of hobby, research of hobby, obsession with hobby, discovery of different hobby, disinterest with old hobby. Strangely, everything in my life follows the same path. I discover a person, or a subject, or anything else, and I become completely immersed in it until I figure it out completely, comprehend its idiosyncrasies, then I grow bored and move on. The friendships I maintain, the hobbies I keep, the interests I continue to feed are those that remain mysterious, those I don’t completely understand. I crave that hidden side, those unanswered questions. I need to know that there is more I don’t know, but may someday know, but until then cannot possibly know. It is not enough for me to be an expert; there must me more for me to discover or I move on to something else.
I carefully, or more often carelessly, box up those old relationships and hobbies and stick them on a high shelf where I can forget about them until I climb up on a ladder while I’m looking for the Christmas decorations. And then, in classic Me style, I take down the box for a peek into my past, an attempt to understand myself better. I may play around with what’s inside, like I may watercolor a picture of my house or read a favorite passage, giving the contents of the box false hope that they will get another day in the sun. But sure enough, the items go back in their confining little home, repacked for the next time I climb that ladder, forgotten until I’m once again ready to remember who I used to be.
But the real question is, what about my self? What if I reach the dead end of the path of self-discovery and truly know myself completely? Will I grow bored with myself and want to move on? Is that why I keep hopping from interest to interest? Is it a redefinition thing, so I never truly know myself, and therefore maintain an interest in myself? The truth: I don’t want to know the answer to the question of self-knowledge. I’m content to remain a mystery to myself, to be my most elusive hobby, refusing to be thrown in a box and shoved on a shelf.