So, more happy than before? Less happy? Differently happy?

If I'm less than content with my current life, it's easy to take a rosy view of the past. The advantage of having many years of blog archives is that, if I am forced to go through them systematically (so, hypothetically speaking, if I were working compulsively on some dumb project or another), I am faced with real-time evidence of my state of mind through the years. Through this method I have discovered that my time in college may not have been all ponies and rainbows and chocolate martinis.* Also, my current life is not exactly full of doom and misery, just glitches and bumps, like always, so I think it's safe to say that my current life and my past life, compared, are just that: life.

The main difference, as far as I can tell, is that when I was in college I always felt able. Certainly I was frustrated, I was overwhelmed, I was lazy, I procrastinated -- but I never really believed that there was anything I was incapable of succeeding at if I tried hard enough, or anything that my past schooling and experiences had not prepared me for. I pushed myself to my limits with things I knew how to do (how long can I wait before I absolutely have to write this paper?) I played by ear on things I didn't, and I did fine.

Now I do not always feel able. Sometimes I feel paralyzed by my inabilities, and I have an uneasy sense that none of my past experience can guide me in what I am trying to do now. It is foreign territory. It is not as easy as I expected. As I am consumed more and more by a fear of what I can't do, I hear a little voice in my head whispering jump ship, jump ship. How strange it is to imagine that the uncertainty of water would be somehow preferable to whatever is lurking on the vessel I stand on now.


*On a completely unrelated note, yesterday I went to the Topsfield Fair with some friends, and chose to go on one of these because I didn't want to be a party pooper, despite the fact that I found the ferris wheel a little intense. I spent the entire ride yelling "Ponies and rainbows and chocolate martinis!" in an attempt, largely unsuccessful, to go to my happy place, while the friend sitting next to me looked on with some combination of pity and amusement. I may be a wuss, but I try to be an entertaining wuss.

So, the lack of updating in this case doesn't mean that I've forgotten I have a blog. In fact, I spent all weekend tending to the blog in ways that you probably would not notice unless you are a creepy stalker who is forever reading my oh-so-thrilling archives.

You see, over the course of three days I manually re-added all of my old Haloscan comments to my blog, including changing the date and time to be accurate to the original. These are all the comments from August 2002 until November 2005. For the record, this level of compulsive attention to detail is what gives me the potential to someday be a good cataloger. It is not an entirely useless quality. Just mostly-useless.

This was a bittersweet experience. There were some comments I was glad to rediscover. There were some that were inane, and probably not worth the trouble if I were not obsessed with the completeness of this endeavor. It reminded me of some people who I was fond of, and some people I'd like to forget. It sent me once more on that reckless journey back in time, constantly trying to compare what I used to have with what I have now, trying to decide if it was worth it, if I've done all right -- if, by comparison, I am in fact happy. (Maybe I'll answer that question another day.)

Mostly, it served as a worthwhile reminder that I have not been writing in a vacuum all this time, and I thank you all for that.

It is that day, once again, when everyone tells their stories about where they were when the planes hit. I have tried to tell my story of that day and the week following enough times that I know by now: it does not make much of a story, like those inside jokes which don't make any sense and fall flat when you try to explain them. Except, you know, not a joke. So I tell my stories to myself over and over again, to make sure I don't forget.

I can tell you this: I was never lonely. I was often surrounded by friends, and even on a day marked by fear, I felt strangely safe in their company. I don't think I'd be able to say that today.

Over the weekend, chatting about baseball players with my father:

Dad: I really want to get Kevin Youkilis a headband. It seems like always, after every pitch, he's wiping the sweat out of his eyes.

Me: I was just thinking that I wanted to get him a beard trimmer! It's like this is the first time he's had facial hair or something, and he doesn't understand that he needs to keep it trimmed down so it doesn't look like there's a small animal living on his chin.

Dad: We should send him a care package.

You know how, in baseball, there is always that guy who ALWAYS swings at the high fastball? (Smile and nod, even if you don't know.) And when you're watching you always say, "Again! Why do you always do that?" and the batter is no doubt cussing himself out for somehow being unable to stop himself from doing the same stupid thing again.

Sometimes that is exactly what happens in my life -- little behaviors that I can't seem to control always have their consequences, big or small, and I am always saying why? why did you do that AGAIN? and there never seems to be any reason beyond a failure of willpower or a failure to learn. Except that ballplayers have a better excuse, because people are always trying to trick them into swinging at the high fastball, but in my life no one is trying to trick me at all. They are all rooting for me, and I think they are just as perplexed and irritated as I am to see me stumble, over and over.

Everyone has dreams in which they are completely naked in an inappropriate place, and I had just such a dream last night.

I was wandering some building with Dave (fully clothed, at that point), and I opened the door to a stairwell and went in, assuming he was right behind me. He was not, apparently, and the door closed behind me. The door had no handle on my side, so I couldn't go back and see what had become of him. (The door also opened into the stairwell, so clearly this whole situation was very much against fire code. Apparently my dreams do not have a fire code. That may not bode well.) The walls of the stairwell were painted orange with some very busy black design on them. It wasn't tiger-striped, but if you imagine a tiger-striped stairwell, that is about the right effect.

Around that time I noticed that, besides being trapped in the most blindingly ugly stairwell ever, I was no longer wearing any clothes.

Feeling that I was without other options, I climbed to the next floor and knocked on the door to see if someone would let me out. The clothes problem would just have to wait.

Someone, conveniently, answered the door, which seemed to open into a suite in some kind of college dorm. As naturally as possible I explained that I was going to be living in that room next year, and would it be okay if I looked around? The people in the room politely acquiesced, and I perused the room while we all ignored the fact that I was wearing no clothes.

At some point the room changed ever so slightly, and different people were in it, one of whom was one of my dear friends. Around this time I also mysteriously acquired underwear. Thank you, Magically Appearing Underwear.

I began to feel chilly -- either snow or a cold rain was falling outside. I looked at my friend, and she just smiled, took off her hoodie, and handed it to me. Thus clad in just panties and a hoodie, I laughed. "I think your roommate saw more of me than she ever wanted to," I told her, and she laughed too.

Around then I woke up just a bit, and realized drowsily that she had behaved in the dream exactly as she would have in real life. There are certain people who can be trusted not to shame you about either the nakedness of your body or your soul when they are revealed. I thought about certain other of my common dream-characters, and knew the scorn they would have shown me in the same situation, and the shame I would have felt. Then it would have been a disconcerting dream, instead of a comforting one.

I am lucky to have a few of those kind, trustworthy people in my life -- especially when they are patrolling my dreams.

earlier -- later