1994
I was a diarist as a teenager, as many teenagers are. It will surprise no one to discover that most of the volumes that survive (which is all of them) are thoroughly taken up by extended monologues of my social life or lack thereof. Yet there are perhaps some things to be gleaned upon reading them. It is easy and often convenient to forget all the trials one goes through (in adolescence especially) to eventually zero in on some projection of self that is comfortable to inhabit. But it can be valuable to remember such trials, too. With that in mind, the following notes are from my first ever diary, begun in November 1994 in one of those faux leather–bound books stamped “Diary” that one buys at Hallmark, an 18th birthday gift from a friend.
- I kept the diary from November 1994 to March 1995, averaging about one entry a month. Entries included an invocation to the reader, a cast of characters, hand-wringing about New Year’s eve plans, New Year’s resolutions, and “does she like me?” mediations. Quoted in the diary’s pages were television commercials, Northern Exposure, “Try Not to Breathe” by R.E.M., and “Kodachrome” by Paul Simon.
- About my TV crush on Janine Turner: “I can’t figure out who she is on the show’s credits.” (Those days before IMDB are gone forever.)
- Promising to trash one’s reader, and then asking the reader to trust you anyway, is what full disclosure is all about.
- Most of the actual words covering over the diary’s consistent subsext don’t need repeating. At 18, I was categorizing my friends—Did I have enemies? I must have, but I didn’t write about them there—by sex (“friends that are girls and friends that aren’t”), by proximity, by influence, by degrees of separation. At 18, I was categorizing myself as “unpredictable, obstinate, egotistical, obnoxious, and fickle,” as self-interested, as confused, as confused, and as confused. These topics should be surprising to no one; it’s going through such confusion that makes self-discovery what it is.
- Number of girls I admired between November 1994 and March 1995: 7. None were particularly keen on me, though in February/March I went on a couple of dates (one of them being a “salad party”), which altered the tone of the diary dramatically. That ended abruptly when I discovered she was seeing someone else named “Woody.”
- Finally (and in the tradition of such posts)…
Robot murder with meditation on telepathy
