The Domo-kun plush is a travelling companion that I picked up at the Japan pavilion at EPCOT. He brings me joy. Domo kind of serves as my emotional support, an emotional support monster, if you will, when Jen or Buck isn't with me. I have needed that support, frankly, in the past particularly when travelling for work. Just having that snarling yet joyful face to spark a tiny bit of happiness in me when I need it.
I had pulled a big handful of scraps of paper from my bulletin board in my office. There are a few post-its with inspirational or otherwise meaningful sayings on them. There are a few addresses of people that I like to write to once in a while, well very infrequently. I like hand-writing little notes, especially postcards, and I want to do that more often. There are a couple other little mementos that I keep on my bulletin board. For example, I have the ticket stub from the baseball game that I drove home drunk from and got my DUI. A reminder of where I was and to not go backwards.
There is a post-it with the ten Buddhist perfections, virtues (https://www.learnreligions.com/paramitas-the-ten-perfections-of-mahayana-buddhism-4590166) that I strive to work on, as well as the Buddhist Noble 8-fold Path (https://tricycle.org/magazine/noble-eightfold-path/). I don't talk or write about Buddhism, religion, or spirituality very much. I know my own practice it is something that I really want to work on more. I want to work on taking time out of my day to meditate as well as putting into practice these values I keep posted right above me.
I grabbed a stack of photographs. Not a stack really, but a flip-book thing as well as some that I keep framed around the office. Grabbing the photos I did in a relatively short time, not taking the entire weekend to go through every individual photo I have, shows me that I really need to digitize all my photos, as well as put together an album of important photos if I ever really needed to leave quickly. The flip-book thing has some photos important to me from over the years, but should probably be updated and would work better put into an album or one of those Shutterfly books.
I packed my diplomas from both high school and college. I packed my athletic letters from high school as well as some academic achievements and letters of recommendation. There are a couple of my running medals, finisher medals from my marathons and a couple from races where I placed in my age group. There are various reminders I keep of achievements over the years both from mental and physical pursuits.
(It is a little strange for me to just be listing off these souvenirs that are important to me but probably aren't so important to anyone else or all that interesting to read about. Again though, this is for myself to look back on, so I'll carry on detailing things.)
There are some little love notes that Jen wrote me and then hid along with these little hearts that she made and hid. There are a couple little pictures the boys made me when they were little.
There are a few things that I've written over the years. There was sort of this underground magazine in high school. I also started writing my own little newsletter when I was in high school in France and carried that over to college - typed and photocopied and snail-mailed in the days before the internet. A blog before blogs. I was presumptuous then to think that anyone would want to read what I wrote, and I've just never stopped presuming that.
I wish that I had kept more of the things I had written in the past. I have some of the decent things I have written, a few of the things that weren't terrible. One of the things about writing is that I never really think that anything that I've written is very good. Some of it is just less terrible than some of the other stuff. There is always room for improvement even in the best of the things that I have done. Maybe that is why I don't organize my writing better -- It is never really completed. There is almost nothing that I would stick in a frame and hang on my wall. I don't know how I would ever come up with more than a handful of pages that I thought was complete let alone being able to publish an entire novel.
All-in-all putting this bag together has demonstrated that I really need to work on organizing these souvenirs and then digitizing them. I really need to pare down on the things that I hold onto including the souvenirs. Did I really need to keep that European Civ final from college that I got a B- on? I may have wanted to remind myself that I once took European Civ. but haven't looked at any of those papers since college.
Now I am just finishing up with some odds and ends. I packed this red metallic Cross pen that I just absolutely love. I have a matte black one as well, but really love the red. It has sort of a stylus end on the top, which is handy. I really enjoy how it writes. I have a couple basic fountain pens and while I enjoy using them, they are more trouble than they are worth.
And I brought about half a dozen journals. Did I mention those when I mentioned the other books? I have maybe another dozen journals that I either haven't started writing in or just have a bit written in. One of the ones I am bringing is sort of this diary that I make a short entry into every three months or so just to show the passing of time. One is a soft-cover one with The Wave design on it that I keep like a personal journal. There is more personal stuff in there, but also I save that one for when I am high and have some incredible idea, which the next day morphs into just sort of a good, half-baked idea. I used to write in it when I was drunk as well. That really taught me that despite what I might think, my creativity was not improved by whiskey. Then I packed a leather bound one given to me my Jen long ago that I never really put to use yet. Once the Wave journal is filled up, I think that will be the one I probably use most. It is one of those that is almost too nice to foul up with silly writings.
I think I left behind the one where I had started some other story ideas. I also left behind my work "bullet journal", which I can hardly get by without. These different journals each with their little starts here and there at different times - They show me that I really need to be more organized about my writing. I need to compile it into one place. This is good for just the morning pages style journaling, but I need to do better really putting ideas together and sitting down and writing, writing. BY that I mean writing and not typing. Typing is much faster for me, and once I'm on a roll, it makes sense. Writing brings out the creative juices though. I need to organize them into a place and then digitize my writing as well. I have lost so many not-terrible things I have written in the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment