Life in Ink and Footsteps

I found videos. Not that kind of video, you pervs. Jeez.

The other night, I was prepping some notes for this blog post and, while flipping through the book of pain, A.K.A. my diary, I realized I have exactly two pages about the holidays. That left me hella confused. There was a lot going on, if I remember correctly (which I might not), and yet… just two pages?

I’d been looking forward to getting to this part, hoping it would jog my memory and bring up some sentimental moments. I should’ve known better. I tell myself that with every disappointment that comes on this journey, yet I never seem to learn my lesson. So, two little pages about not only the German Christmas party I was invited to, Hanukkah with the family, New Year’s Eve with friendly Dutch girl F., and a basketball game at Barclays Center. Two pages. That’s it. Naturally, I panicked. What on earth am I going to write about??

The next logical step: dig into the old pictures. And, no surprise, there are none. I don’t have many pictures from that year in general. My phone had a shitty camera, and a lot of photos were shared in low quality from friends with equally shitty cameras. Others were taken with my small, shitty compact camera, and I had to upload them the old-school way: through a cable or memory card reader. Storage was limited, and most of my photos lived on portable data discs. Was this seriously only 8 years ago?? Anyway.

So, after almost a decade of dragging the pictures here and there, switching phones, changing accounts on both Android and Apple, and not backing things up regularly, the number of photos I actually possess is, unfortunately, limited. And as if that weren’t enough, I didn’t use social media much that year. For an entire year in the USA, I posted exactly 27 photos on Instagram—zero stories. For comparison: during my year in Japan, I posted 44 times with multiple pictures (mostly monthly dumps or random trip highlights) and countless stories.

I spent about three days just sitting around, not knowing what to do. My brain refused to let me skip this part and move on to the next post—oh no, no Sir. I am not moving forward until this is sorted out. So what should I do? Not write anything? Maybe post a quick apology about not having anything to share?

But still, it felt like I was missing something. For sure, I must have some piece of info, right? And then I remembered something. Something I really didn’t want to remember. I made videos. A whole bunch of situation-describing, shit-talking videos with the girls—sometimes by myself. I was sending them to my ex-boyfriend. Not THAT ex, that disaster’s been buried deep. No, I sent them to the ex of four years—the one I missed. Not in a romantic way—I had my fun in New York—but I missed the friend in him. We kept in touch from time to time, but my brain shoved it to the back of my mind because this stuff is just flat-out embarrassing.

If you thought reading your old whining, bitching, and philosophizing was awkward, try listening to it on low-quality, unstable videos where you can HEAR the nonsense spewing from your mouth. In terrible English with a harsh accent. So here I am now, sitting at the table after watching the first few snippets. So far, nothing useful—just a bunch of random nonsense a few girls were chatting about while driving around Long Island. My brain is fried.

Maybe in a few years, I’ll think it’s kind of cute—a nice memory of youthful happiness—but right now? All I feel is cringey, nauseating embarrassment. I guess it shows I’m not yet mature or healed enough to appreciate it without wanting to crawl into a hole.

So I’m taking a break from that. Eating sour candies, drinking tea, and writing this. It might be the only thing I’m able to write because this doesn’t really count as skipping a post. The videos are part of the journey too. So until I get through it and figure out how to write about the holidays, this is all there is. Luckily, I have enough entries to post before this becomes an actual problem. Can you imagine?

“Welcome to my blog. It has only 14 posts because I can’t get through this painful experience. Hope you had fun.”

Wish me luck. I will need it.
Or send me money so that I can afford therapy.

Oh, and a song? Isn’t it obvious?
Crazy – Gnarls Barkley