Absence makes the heart grow fonder

I have good news, and I have bad news...

The good news is that I'm going to keep on writing here. The bad news is that I'm still awake again. It's after 1 a.m. and I dug up some old writings I had saved from between the time I was a Junior in high school to the time I was a Senior in college. And let's just say...I've seen less crap in a septic tank. I said I was going to be honest, right?

There are some salvageable ideas buried in there, but some of it is going to be like polishing a turd, it ain't never gonna be a diamond. A double negative. Slang. My editor will never let me live that one down. I'd be better off trying to slip in a one sentence paragraph.

Green Bottle Theory

I was first introduced to this concept in high school by one of my science teachers. The theory is that when you get stuck on a problem, you take a step back, grab a green bottle, and eventually you'll discover a different approach and, potentially a solution. Given my proclivity to liven things up a little and put my own creative spin on things, let's rename it. We'll call it the Heineken® Uncertainty Principle. (It's a pun. You'll figure it out, eventually.) We're going to go real-time on this read. I'm going to go grab a green bottle and we'll take it from there. (Stick around. This could get interesting.)

Intermission.

I couldn't find a Heineken® but did locate a Yuengling®, and I'm starting to think of a Larry Miller bit I saw on YouTube about the five stages of drinking. Most of it doesn't apply here but the part about the math regarding how much sleep you're going to need in order to function the next day is apropos. So anyway...

The not-so-good book

It's not a book, a binder, really. One hundred and fifteen paces of drivel. I retyped a lot of handwritten garbage in order to consolidate ideas a lot time ago. Let's see here...I wrote about a girl. Then a semi-salvageable quote, then I have no idea what this is, then more about a girl (same girl.) Page 4 now, oh, more about the same girl. Then girl again and another semi-salvageable bit of prose. Oh wait, page 7...it's about a girl (different girl, same crap.)

Now we go into my dark period. A depressing poem (no doubt about a girl.) Some bitter poetry, oh yeah, I remember this. That was my Sylvia Plath phase. No good teen writer is without one. If I'm rambling here, blame it on the A-a-a-a-a-al-co-hol. Page 12 has some interesting stuff. Ready?

"I used to know who you were,

From the early years of your childhood

and becoming a young adult.

I remember it all.

You have grown in many ways,

And in many different directions.

Now, I follow you on a different journey.

You have followed the straight and narrow path...

Until now.

And at this very moment, as I stand here today,

I look into your eyes and I see nothing.

I do not know you anymore."

I turn from the mirror and walk away.

Hey. That's deep when you're 16. At least it wasn't about a girl. I'm not really sure what it was about, but I don't think it was a girl. After that there's more "poor me" crap and some more about yet another girl. I might have to skip the murder mystery genre and start reading Nicholas Sparks or something.

Time for sleep

God, don't I wish. Now I'm just keyed up. It's 3:04 a.m., but I did find that sleep essay that I referred to in the post "I can't sleep" back in August. It wasn't quite as good as I remember it but I know exactly when I wrote it. No lie. I dated and time stamped like nearly everything in the book. Yeah, I threw a "like" in there. Hey, we're having a few drinks and sharing here, aren't we? Sure we are.

So I wrote this on 11/20/1991 (2:06 a.m.) Know what that means? That at 18, I was just as dysfunctional as I am right now. But at least I'm not writing about a girl. Now we're skipping along to page 45, where I basically wrote a little about a girl...and I was happy. Yes. You heard that right. It was Friday, October 16, 1992 (@ 12:30 a.m.) But a funny thing happened. Somewhere between the handwritten copy and the printed version for the binder, one of the three pages went missing. Actually, it burned in a small fire. I hated candles for a long time after that. I think I might have written about one once...ONCE!

The time has come now to write about another girl, who will most certainly inflict bodily harm once she reads this and realizes that I have spent another night writing instead of sleeping. Then I'll be less figurative and more of a literal...Incomplete Writer.