Holidailies Day 3: Memories

Facebook has been doing this Memories things, where they show you posts from previous years. I actually kinda like it. I have always loved history, and looking at my personal history as recounted on Facebook is cool. Seeing how the last four Novembers have been All NaNo All the Time. Seeing posts of crazy stuff I did in college (or not so crazy stuff).

There are also distinct themes I've seen. I pretty much have one note when it comes to posting about homework. Right now I'm getting a lot of the old statuses where I was like... "This paper is trying to kill me, but I swear I won't let it," which is kinda how I feel RIGHT NOW.

The problem with the memories thing is that it often drops bombs of memories that are equally good and painful at the same time. Like, I love remembering the holidays spent with my sister and my nephews. It still hurts like hell though, so I try to contain it to times when I have the energy to handle it. Over Thanksgiving week, in the midst of massive assignments and wonky work schedules, I was getting a barrage of those memories that I so wasn't prepared to handle.

Then I realized, that's kinda how it always is. I may pretend that I can pull the memories out when I want to, and can deal with them. It's not like that though. There's always the little things that pop up. The realization that I'm writing my paper (and thinking about writing my thesis) on a topic that my sister would love to give her input on. We'd probably wildly disagree on it, because we often did, but her input would still be valuable and I miss it.

Working with kids pretty much guarantees that I get reminded of my nephews every once in awhile. It is a risk I'm willing to take, because they're usually great reminders. Funny things they said, or habits they had. Still, it hurts to know that I won't get a repeat of that when I go to work with high school kids, because they never made it that far.

My only saving grace is that the memories aren't all bad. There are plenty of memories of good times, without the attendant grief. Jokes that I still think are hilarious. Plenty of geeky things that still make me ridiculously happy. There's a reminder of how far I have come in some areas of my life, and how far I still have to go in other areas. It's the benefit of history. You can see what went right, what wasn't the best idea, and apply that to your life.

Enjoy your memories and learn from them. Then look forward and see what you can do with that knowledge to make the rest of your life sufficiently awesome.