Sitting On My Bed Doing Homework For News Writing

First things first: this new blogger interface sucks. Because it's new. I don't like getting used to new things. It was perfectly fine the way it used to be. I hate change. But you know that already.

The reason I'm here now is because it's one of those nights where I can't sleep because I feel like I'm drowning in a veritable sea of nostalgia.  I know this sounds silly, but I'm an incredibly sentimental person. That's why I save everything. I like to have a tangible link to the past, something I can pick up and say "oh yeah, I remember where I was and what I was doing and how I felt when I got this." That's why I video tape so many things (or why I used to, there hasn't been much to tape lately); having them on record and being able to look back at them is important to me.

I was gonna post this. I swear I was. But these things never come out the way I intend. It's like I can monologue to myself in my head in the most flowery prose conceivable, and have a nice, cohesive, linear train of thought, but as soon as it comes time to translate that pattern into actual writing, it turns to mush and melts away.

I guess my point is I miss things. Lots of things. From every point in my life. I get super nostalgic and I wish things could be the way they used to be. But I like my life the way it is now too. I guess what I really want is just to be able to go back and experience some of the good parts of my past again. So... I guess what I'm saying is I want a time machine, or maybe a consciousness-influenced experiential history simulator, so I can go back to particularly desirable moments and see if they really were as good as I remember them being.

I suppose all this has been brought about by the weird dreams I've been having lately, dreams from all over the place, historically speaking, and each one of them has been sort of a downer. Couple that with the fact that today was one of those crappy rainy fall days and then add in my odd work hours that restrict me from seeing most people outside of the weekend, and you've got a nice recipe for some melancholic introspection. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. This isn't a "woe is me, my life is so miserable, feel sorry for me" rant, not in the slightest. I just feel weird, can't sleep, and need to get it out somehow. I also love the way typing on a laptop keyboard feels, so this sort of comes as the natural outlet.

This blog has become less of an actual blog and more of an online space where my ideas go to die. I tend to sit down with what I think would be a good idea for a post, hammer away at the keyboard for a while, and then ultimately decide that whatever it is I've written is not suitable for posting, either because it's too personal or just not interesting enough to warrant putting out there. So today I say "screw that." I'm posting this. I don't care that it's an ultimately pointless piece of stream of consciousness rambling. I don't care that there's no deep message to glean, no profound nugget of wisdom to be gathered. Heck, whenever I do feel like I have something of substance to write, it's because I want to throw out some kind of impactful one liner, but then I end up having to craft an entire post around it, and I then find I don't have as much to say as I originally thought, and then that draft goes to the blog cemetery. Well, I guess it would be more like the blog cryogenic freezing chamber, because they're all saved as drafts, but they're no more likely to ever see the light of day.

Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong. Maybe instead of trying to be structured and organized, I should just go. I usually waste so much time trying to formulate a proper introduction that by the time I've come up with something that may be acceptable, I've already lost steam and don't feel like finishing the rest of the post. This particular entry here has been largely self-reflective, and I almost feel like I should apologize to anyone who's reading it for not providing enough relevant material to your life. But at the same time, this is the most I've written in forever, and I would like to try to do this more often. Maybe the best way would be to just abandon all the rigidity and just sit down every so often, bang something out, and put it out there. Save the real writing for the guys who know what they're doing. I don't even have a title for this thing yet. I should title it with the next thing that pops into my head. There. I just did. I don't know why, but the first thing that popped into my head was one time in Spring of 2007 when I was doing an assignment for my news writing class with B. Kirk, on my bed, in the relative dark of 315. I think the light above the sink might have been on at the time, but none others. By that light and the glow of my beat up old Dell laptop, I was... I dunno, underlining things or something. The funniest thing about that is that it's not all that dissimilar to what I'm doing right now... sitting on my bed with just the light of my laptop. Maybe that's the connection. Who knows.

These paragraphs keep getting longer and longer. Maybe I should wrap this up before I start going on and on about how I had that news writing class with Amy Nipper, who would also be a Coms 101 GA with me two years later. Or start talking about that time in my communication and change grad class that our under-prepared group called an audible with a creative approach to our presentation to hide the fact that we hadn't done nearly as much work or research as any of the other groups, and it paid off big time. One of my finer moments in group presentation history, if I do say so. I went home that summer and finished up watching season 5 of The Office, and re-watching The Office is what I've spent a significant portion of my free time doing lately, so here we are, full circle. Or something.

Earlier when I said "I was gonna post this," I wrote that because, at that time, I wasn't planning on posting this, and I was frustrated at how I sat down to write but then couldn't come up with anything tremendously worthwhile. But I don't care that this makes little sense as far as traditional narratives go. Maybe that's the point. Maybe I need to not care so much and just do this more often. Every so often perhaps I'll stumble on a good lesson that I can share with the people who read this. Or maybe I'll just continue to get stuff off my chest, and in so doing ease my own mind a little bit. Either way, I'll feel better at the end of it all.