Oh you flawed girl, you

Katya, being lovely, lent me her old laptop so I could work on my proposal. It's coming along. It should be finished, actually, but I keep changing my mind about things. It's silly to bother changing my mind now; if I get the fellowship I'll have something like 4 months to change my mind before I even get a key to the office.

Anywho, I had this computer to help me get work done. Even more helpful than simply having this computer was the fact that it does not hook up to internet. Very very good idea to promote work-doing. Of course, I found another way to procrastinate. I went through a few old floppy disks and wondered at their strange contents. There were lots of snippets of writing, piss poor poetry, old papers from as far back as freshman year of college... all kinds of good stuff.

And, at last, I found the disk with the original camp story. The one I re-typed to submit as a writing sample for this proposal. Grr.

On the same disk, languishing in some folder or other, there were two files, one named "Shane" and one named "Shaney Shane Shane." The first was a collection of emails I had saved from my St. Bona's email account before it poofed away forever. Keep in mind, I saved these while Shane was still ticking. He was always that precious. The second file was a mournful, self-pitying, angry and honest reaction to his death. I don't know how both of these files ended up on the same disk, but it was quite the experience to read them over again.

Last night Meera said something about my entry of a few days ago, the one that was a bit testy about college friends writing a chain of emails. I was embarrassed as soon as I posted it. I know I have the power to delete my own posts if I don't like them, but there's another part of me that feels it's necessary to remember these things. Even the embarrassing parts. Especially the embarrassing parts? It's inescapable in real journals. (And by "real" I mean bound paper.) One can't very well rip out every entry that annoys one. The book would fall apart eventually, for one thing.

But also there's something dishonest about deleting those things, like not disclosing a nose-job at the sperm bank. We are all flawed, and that's human. Maybe I hope to read the awkward bits over again until I can react with a sort of calm acceptance of my humanity, rather than embarrassment.