11. A year or more ago...

Full Prompt: Turn to an entry in your journal or diary from a year or more ago. What has changed and what has stayed the same since then?

This one was fun and I wanted to get to it soon for a variety of reasons. First of all, because I was in Europe a year ago, so I was actually keeping a journal pretty religiously (the bus rides between cities was loooong) and also because I am self-involved enough that I love reading old things I wrote. This is less for their content (trust me, I cringe at my 'feelings' and 'emotions' from the pre-college entries in this blog) and more because I can always hear myself writing these things. Plus, it's always interesting to know exactly what feelings were going on a year ago and see how things have changed.

I kept the journal by hand, and even if I didn't, I wouldn't be terribly keen to post it directly, but I'll write a summary. Beforehand, if I have to guess how I was feeling, I'm going to go with "omgthisissuperfuni'mineurope." Let's see...

Ohhh snap! I was wrong! I forgot that we went to Venice the day after Austria (where I distinctly remember celebrating the 4th of July with a rousing round of "America the Beautiful- Devon, a kid on the trip, looked up all the verses on his iPhone and tried to make us sing them all. Did you know there are like six verses to that song? Fuck that noise) and Venice was the only city I didn't like. It was hot, and smelly, and I didn't feel very well so I was grumpy. Furthermore, we had had a fantastic time in Austria (I really liked our central Europe stretch in general) and I was sorry to leave the relative peace and freedom of the Amsterdam/Switzerland/Germany/Austria part of the trip and get thrown back into the tours and not-being-able-to-leave-the-thirty-person-group part of the trip. Plus it's a rather touristy city at this point, so everything was expensive- and we got conned into paying 21 euro for a lunch of rather shitty pizza and pasta. Actually I seem to recall, in general, that we didn't have any good italian food while in Italy. I thought at first it was just because we have an American perception of what Italian food should be, but my roommate Theresa, who had relatives in Rome (when we were there she actually skipped out on group stuff for the day to hang out with her cousin) assured me that real Italian food is delicious, and we can't have been eating at good places.

Anyway my general view on Venice was that it was a very interesting city, seeing as it was built in the middle of the water. Due to this fact, it's been sinking every year for five centuries, to the point where you can see the original steps to the canals have long submerged underwater. My thoughts in regards to this were pretty much: good riddance.

It didn't help when they made that awful Doctor Who episode about Vampires in Venice. Why did they have to cash in on that Twilight nonsense?!

The one up point about Venice is that I was feeling better by sunset, and our tour guide, Herbie, (who I had mixed feelings on, for the record) had managed to get us a deal with the gondoliers and so we all floated along in a gondola, listening to the musicians (who were in our boat!) and drinking spumante. Unfortunately, since our boat contained the musicians for the whole trip, tourists kept snapping pictures of us. As I pointed out in my journal, I don't know how I feel about my greasy, sweaty face being in the scrapbooks of travellers all over the world...

Another thing that I was doing was writing mini-bios, describing the people who went on the trip with me. I think I figured after two non-stop weeks with them, first impressions were over and I could offer a fairer assessment of them. Reading over them, either people ended up endearing themselves to me later in the trip or I have a hazier view of it than I would have expected, because I was quite cutting on a few people who, a year later, I more or less remember fondly. I didn't really stay in touch with anyone from the trip- they were all polite enough, just none of them would have been my choice by a long shot if I could have chosen my mates for the trip.

So... changes? Well, that's hard of course (that's what she said) because I was in a completely different place then, and living very much in the moment. Obviously, I'm not in Europe anymore, nor shall I have the prospect of visiting in front of my any time soon. I suppose since I've moved to Chicago, I'm still in a city that definitely has a touristy vibe- helped of course by the fact that I work only a few blocks from Water Tower, past Michigan Avenue. Actually, walking to the train today made me pretty disgruntled (aside: can you be gruntled? Would that mean happy and satisfied?) because there was a slew of people in the way. AND a huge family of tourists plopped themselves in front of the train entrance, bearing their suitcases, and proceeded to open up a map and look around. And I don't particularly care about them being foreigners in general, but whatever they were speaking wasn't remotely familiar to me (I'd guess something eastern european) so I couldn't point them in the right direction. Which I don't do to be polite, but to get them the hell out of my way. I must be fairly approachable looking when I'm not trying to get somewhere, though, because when I'm at Union Station waiting for the MegaBus, people always ask me how to get downtown. Never mind that it's a stupid questions because if they just LOOKED THE FUCK AROUND they would see it behind them, or if they bothered to read street signs (and these were Americans, mind you) they would see that they are in fact STANDING on Jackson Ave.

Honestly, tourists.

Anyway so I guess not a whole lot has changed. I still bitch about tourists, I still hate when I got to restaurants and get charged more than I planned (which used to happen at Cesar's... but hey, margaritas) and I still form opinions about people? Actually I remember vaguely planning to do the same mini-bios for the people in my programme, but it takes longer to form those impressions when you don't literally live with all of them 24/7. I could probably write them at this point, but I don't know if I care to. Anyway, I did spend a nice day out on Montrose Beach, which is beautiful, surprisingly. It wasn't even terribly crowded down by the water, and had a sweet view of downtown through the harbour, and of Edgewater/Rogers Park.

10. Name your most cherished childhood memory.

I spent some time thinking about this, and came up with diddly squat. This isn't to say, of course, that I don't have childhood memories that I'm fond of, but I'm not a person terribly disposed to nostalgia. Plus I feel like a lot of my childhood memories are either mildly traumatising (such as the first and only time I was spanked [I totally deserved it for the record], the year I had no friends in grade school, getting in fights with my friends in high school, getting yelled at by teachers- it's like I only have the ability to retain the negative stuff) or just kind of ineffably profound.

I made a playlist recently of all the music I listened to in high school that I'm appropriately ashamed of now. While I can't say that I particularly like any of the music any more, there are still memories attached to a lot of it, which I can elicit when I listen to said playlist. However, again, it's just sort of an inexplicable sense of what it felt like to be 17 again (good and bad) rather than specific moments in time or memories. Today "Swing, Swing" came on while I was at the beach, and dammit if that song just doesn't make me feel like I'm driving my car for the first time all over again.

There are two reasons I've decided that I lack the capacity to suffer from nostalgia. First of all, my cynicism doesn't allow me to have a biased enough memory of times past. I'm not saying my memories are unbiased, just that they certainly don't seem to only encompass the good. I don't have this sense of a halcyon era long gone. Yes, childhood was nice because I could play a lot, but also no one took me seriously and I couldn't do whatever I wanted. High school wasn't so terrible, I had good friends and we did silly things, but it's a time of ridiculous emotions (seriously, I've read my old blog posts, it's a wonder my mother didn't strangle me). College was fun but also stressful. It's always a mix of good and bad. Somehow, I've managed to keep a perspective on that. It's not perfect, and I'm not saying that I don't sometimes wish I could go back in time (mostly because having a TARDIS would be FUCKING AWESOME) but, as my friend Shannon pointed out, it'd be better to go back as a ghost or phantom and follow your old self around and just see what it was really like in the bygone days of ol'.

Secondly, I'm actually really happy with where I am right now. Which isn't to say my life is perfect- I have no idea what I'll be doing in six months, I continue to remain woefully single (and with my new-found love for My Little Pony I just don't see how), I'm objectively kind of poor, and I'm further away from most of my 'best' friends than I ever have been in my life. Maybe again I'm just biased (I did spend a spectacular day on the beach, reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which will definitely give you some perspective on angsty teenagers) but I really love this city and I love my job, and even though I'm far away from my old friends, I a) have managed to make some new ones who aren't too terrible themselves and b) I live in the future, so I can still keep in touch with a lot of the old ones.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't have a most cherished childhood memory because I'm cynical yet content.

I was going to post the photo I have of the ridiculous "yard art" my parents' neighbours have, but my phone hates sending pictures so I probably won't get it until tomorrow.