I’ve taken a breather from blogging in the past few days to let my fall reschooling sink in. It feels good to take a few days of real vacation, probably the first that I’ve let myself have since August. When alone, I work myself into the ground, but when I’m with friends, they thankfully wrench me away from my workaholism. And whenever my sister Gill comes to town, as she did this weekend, then the wild rumpus starts.
During the holidays, I’ll be blogging sporadically. Gill and her fiance, Brian, are in Sonoma this week, and Darren arrives tomorrow. This means there will be lots of carousing and posing for ridiculous photos, but not as much writing. Next week I’ll be buckling down and gearing up to spend the spring in Jackson, so I hope to get rid of the piles of CDs and bags of yellow pads that seem ready to swallow me whole.
I’m still mulling over and making sense of my time in the classrooms. The final step of revisiting the past will be processing “personal artifacts”: old photos, home movies, and keepsakes. Perhaps most importantly, I’ll read the writing that I’ve saved from my school days, such as newspaper editorials, humor pieces, journal entries, personal statements from my college applications, and the short autobiography I wrote my senior year of high school. My teenage writing is rife with school stress and nostalgia for a carefree childhood, and it helps me understand the powerful influence school had on who I became.
I spent so many years wishing that I could just be a kid again. Now that I’ve taken the opportunity to relive my childhood in many ways, I’m finally ready to let it go.
What is this “wild rumpus” you speak of? I thought we were going to sit daintily and discuss the weather while I’m home.
I’d like to go through all my old writing and other things I’ve saved at home as well. I think it’s a good time in my life to revisit the past, do a huge cleaning and get rid of some of the mental and physical clutter.
You ARE a lady, after all. I suppose that you can give me an etiquette lesson in crossing your ankles and raising your pinkies while sipping tea.
Christmas is an excellent time to revisit the past, especially if you go back to your childhood home, because you often feel like a kid again. The traditions and environment are the same, and it’s cool to use them as a measuring stick for how much you’ve changed. It’s also, like you said, a chance to go through those old boxes of photos and My Little Ponies to just do something with them already. It’s cleansing.