Backdated: The weekend of my first week at UCSC

[garote]

This entry covers the first "party" I attended at UCSC. It was troubling going back through this, because it describes the beginning of what could have been a very fine relationship, which I then botched in my naïvete shortly afterwards.

Also troubling because I clearly took it very seriously on the inside, but was totally unable to communicate this seriousness to the people that mattered. In fact, since reading back over it and putting it in order requires that I partially relive it ... it's got me kind of depressed. :/

Comments

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

These sorts of feelings of regret and hindsight being 20/20 are why I rarely enjoy reading over my own journals from a long time ago. Now that I've been LJing for over five years, I sometimes get uncomfortable about how the entries hold up over time. Basically, it's evidence (for myself and others) that I make mistakes. Looking back years later, I can see what those mistakes are.

I guess over time I get more forgiving of myself too, though, realizing that I was young(er) and had less information, and that I really do my best with the resources I have--one of those resources being relative emotional maturity, which I didn't have much of when I was 19/20. :)

*babble babble* I should be working. ^_^

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

However you feel about it, it's a beautiful story (from a third-party point of view). Nice writing.

[garote]

I'm flattered that you read it - that anyone reads it, really. :)

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

I can't read neuroscience papers all day. :P

[garote]

Yes, regret. That's the word I should have come up with. After I posted that and went to bed, I drifted off to sleep imaging the scenario that I was back in 1998, asleep in the bed of my Watsonville house, and all the intervening time still existed as a memory. At first I thought about all the different things I'd say to people that I hadn't met yet - all misunderstandings and awkward social situations and drama I could have avoided - then gradually it became a scenario of me storming into the CIA and FBI offices and demanding to speak to the higher-ups, shouting that they really have to know about what's going to happen in September of 2001, and could they please, under no circumstances, allow the president to go storming into Iraq and grind our economy and worldwide image into the dirt.

:D

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

Haha. Makes your silly social mistakes look pretty minor, eh?

[garote]

[sardonic grimace] Oh my ... I hadn't considered that, but yes, YES IT DOES. :D