2009-2011

Realized today that I couldn't remember the URL for my blog. My goal in leaving it alone for so long was to avoid thinking of life in blog post updates and to refrain from putting my whole life on the internet, and I think I have succeeded in both. Rereading these entries just now brought back good memories, though, and made me realize I do like having a record of my day-to-day life and what seems important at any given time. We'll see about going forward, but for a moment let's look back...here are all of the entries I've started and haven't finished in the past 2 years. It's not a bad summary:

4/28/09
just sent an email to jon and quentin that had zero introduction, just two words in the subject line and a link in the body. just hit me that maybe

8/11/09
OPINIONATED

while having a get-to-know-you conversation recently, i realized i'm not one to express opinions. my philosophy towards everything is the same as my philosophy towards pandora radio stations -- i certainly like certain songs best but i never formally "dislike" something because i'm afraid of the opportunities that will close off. in pandora i might miss an amazing new song, in life i might miss a new friend or a new understanding.

10/25/09
i love LA

i wanted my last saturday to be a spectacular celebration of life in southern california. knew just who to call. what am i going to do for adventures in minnesota when nikki isn't there?? (followed by "[IMAGE]" 22 times)

11/23/09
bought a car today! a 2010 silver honda fit. i wondered if i would feel really happy or really excited when i signed all of the papers, but i found that i just felt like i was renting another car, except this one was really expensive. i also felt like i really don't care about cars and wish i could spend that money on something like a trip around the world or presents for everyone i know or a month of really really good dinners.

12/25/09
2010

1. Read 26 books
2. Follow the news and have opinions
3. Feel healthy
4. Refuse boredom

1/28/10
i read catcher in the rye last summer for the first time. i didn't quite get it, i don't think. maybe i read it too old. maybe i was too happy of a teenager, and i had a hard time relating. regardless, i enjoyed it. i love that other people love it. i love that melissa loves salinger. and i love that i was able to read at least one of his books while he was still alive. i don't know why that means anything to me, but it does. to have read salinger, vonnegut, classics already by the time i got to them but

3/14/10
muchness

i saw alice in wonderland last week. i liked it. didn't love it -- i've never been a fan of obvious computer animation that doesn't fit with the feel of the movie (thumbs up for the jabberwocky scene and for the hare, thumbs down for tweedle dee&dum and the hatter's dance) -- but really liked it. one line hit me (and the rest of the blogging world, apparently) hard: when the hatter accused alice of losing her muchness.

i am thinking back to when i was in elementary school. i regularly wore three soccer socks in seasonally relevant colors lined up on each leg like ice cream scoops. i claimed to strangers and friends that i was an alien and that i came from lima, peru. my friends and i scheduled time daily for pretending we were animals. bryanna and i played on my swingset nearly everyday, turning that small collection of pipes and swings into wild horses galloping through fields, hammocks out by the lazy river, beds of straw in the barn loft, sickbeds and deathbeds, stages for victories over enemies, disease, society, and expectations. i cared about whether i did my best in school. i thought i was good at everything: acting, running, dancing, academics, poetry, everything. i chased ariel around the field with silverware. i shouted and sang all the time.

not all things have changed. i am still me. but i think if you compared us -- little lauren and 2010 lauren -- you'd notice something was gone. the given assumption that i am 1000% comfortable in my skin. that over-the-top, ridiculous, individual presence. my weirdness. my muchness.

i'm trying to remember when my friends and i first started valuing normalcy in others. middle school i guess. everyone tamed their individuality while emphasizing how well they fit in. now i'm afraid that i couldn't access that part of me again if i tried. which i haven't. but if i did.

10/14/10
oh hello

ha! remember this?

sometime between the time i last updated and the time i would have updated again, it finally dawned on me that maybe the old people are right: having your life on the internet isn't the greatest thing in the world. not that i write anything here that is scandalous or even very interesting, but anytime i started typing in this window i'd think "ehhh" and stop. UNTIL TODAY!!!!

today the topic is: current events

i don't have tv now and i usually only read/skim the most popular articles on nytimes.com, which have increasingly become op-ed columnists about politicians and random health-related arcitles, which means i am completely out of the loop on real, actual-events-are-happening-in-the-actual-world news. so the first time i heard about these chilean miners was maybe a week ago when a friend had a link to this infographic in his gchat status. i was like, "oh neat...WAIT, this is real??" after gathering from several facebook statuses that the miners were being rescued last night, i searched and searched until i found a website with a live news stream (cnn.com, who would have guessed?) and watched the 29th, 30th, and 33rd miners come out of the ground.

i was struck by how HAPPY everyone was. obviously the people being rescued and their families and their rescuers were happy, but everyone, everywhere was happy. everyone, everywhere was watching. i, the apathetic self-absorbed american youth without a news channel, found a way and the time to watch. i