Revisiting Some Old Words

In the process of clearing out junk from the apartment, I dug out my old PC, which I should have gotten rid of when I moved three years ago, but because I had never gotten around to cleaning out all my files, I just moved it, shoved it into a closet, and ignored it until now. But such behavior obviously no longer works in my new minimalist (ha!) lifestyle, so the computer must go. Thus, when I couldn’t sleep on Sunday morning, I dragged myself out of bed and sat down at the dining room table to see what was on it.

This computer has some bad history. I got it in 2000. It was already a couple of years old at that point. Mr. Ex and I had just broken up but were still on speaking terms. His parents had gotten a new PC and offered me the old one. I accepted. It wasn’t a bad machine, and it would give me a chance to do some writing. Some months later when we were on pretty shitty terms, he asked for the computer back, saying he wanted to give it to a friend. I told him to get stuffed.

I did use the computer a fair amount when I was living alone, mostly for writing (which I did a lot of at the time) and internet use. I hadn’t looked at any of these files since I moved. What I found was

Some notes for a “novel,” which were pretty bad.
Several short stories, mostly unfinished, but not absolutely terrible.
My journal from 2000, which was just painful to read (and far less coherent than all my paper journals over the years. The PC journal was a short-lived experiment) and kind of got me all stirred up since a lot of it was about a breakup I have long since moved past but didn’t really enjoy remembering.

The notes for the novel and the short stories were all very much based on what was going on in my life at the time (I’m self-centered like that. Also, I’m not good at coming up with new ideas.). As I was reading over them, I had some interesting memory issues. Was this really what happened? Or had I embellished for literary purposes? The latter would seem to make sense, but as I read these pieces, I remembered things happening very much the way I had written them, which makes me wonder if I wrote exactly what happened
from memory, or if the writing is influencing my memories. It’s been 5 or 6 years since these things happened, so the memories are going to be a bit fuzzy. I can remember the general gist of things, but not always the specific details. And I wonder how much of what I remember is distorted now by what I wrote. What I wrote wouldn’t necessarily make for better memories; some it is pretty brutal. So now, I am replaying all sorts of things in my
head.

“Did I really say that?”
“Did he really say that?”
“Was I that stupid?”
“Did I actually think that was a good idea?”
“How could I possibly think that was a good idea?”

And so forth. Sadly, the answer to all of those questions is probably “yes” (or possibly “vodka” to the last one).

The upshot of all this introspection is that there are a couple of bits and pieces in all this writing that I didn’t totally hate and that I might be able to work into something. Which would require some actual work on my part, but if Plum Sykes can manage to finish a book, surely I can actually finish a short story or two.