Gumption Studio

Excavating My Personal Past

Though I have not yet finished exploring the rich resources of my family’s past, this weekend I turned my attention to a group of boxes that my roommate and I have been tripping over since we moved in. All I knew was that there were papers of some sort buried in there, but I had no idea from when.

Turns out, the majority of the content was from my high school years, and even a few “treasures” from those horrid middle school years. I shudder just thinking about that now.

I found a few papers from various classes and the plethora of material from my college search, complete with multiple drafts of my admissions essay and supplementary writings. I saved the final version of that essay, but trashed the rest. I couldn’t bear to read more than a sentence of it, though.

Surprisingly, what I found the most of were my attempts at writing stories. I was much more creative back then than I feel I am now. One of the stories was specifically for a class, where the assignment was to write a “founding myth.” I remember struggling heartily through that assignment, yet I found snippets and drafts of other stories I don’t even recall writing, much less saving. And most of them are pretty good!

Now, I also came across the occasional scrap of paper with a hastily written story idea that I had to throw in the trash as soon as I read it, ashamed that I once thought such a concept worth committing to paper.

But overall, I’m impressed with my former self’s creative side, much of which I attribute to a friend of mine starting a creative writing club in high school (the remnants of which I also found…). Now I just need to work to stir those creative juices again, bring it back from the ashes, hopefully improved somewhat by the intervening years.

It’s time to return to fiction. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for me to announce any publication of such efforts. Trust me on this one.

Excavating My Personal Past was published on May 6th, 2012, under the C'est la vie category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Exploring the Past

A few months ago, my father came across some boxes of old papers and photographs that my grandfather (his father) had kept. My grandmother and my aunt came over to my parents’ house, and we all spent a few great hours going through the materials packed away in these boxes, with nothing younger than 50 years old contained in them.

With my burgeoning interest in genealogy thanks to my job, I offered to take the boxes and begin the process of digitizing them all. But I have procrastinated, fully aware of the immensity of the task at hand.

Until today. Today, I dove in. I barely made a dent, which is a bit disheartening, though not entirely unexpected.

I was able to scan about 100 images, taking care to get high-resolution images of the ones with faces in particular, and scanning the backs of any that had writing or other identifying marks on them.

Each of these photographs is amazing, and makes me want to know the people, the stories, behind them. And while I have a rather complete family tree (of this particular portion of my family at least), I am not sure I’ll ever be able to say with certainty which faces go with which names.

But that’s the great thing about this modern age of discovery. As I scan them, I am uploading them to Flickr, where who knows? Someone might recognize something or someone in one of these photos. Even if it doesn’t happen for years. There’s a chance. And I can continue to look for information on my own, and perhaps I will come across a distant relative who already has the dots connected.

So for now, I shall continue to digitize what I have on hand, and file them away a bit more safely than stacked in cardboard boxes. And I shall continue to imagine what the lives of the people pictured might have been like.

Exploring the Past was published on April 15th, 2012, under the Family category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

84, Charing Cross Road

84, Charing Cross Road has to be one of the most delightful books I have ever read! Why did it take me so long to pick it up? It’s only been sitting on my Goodreads ‘to-read’ list forever!

While the author is technically Helene Hanff, the book is actually a collection of letters she wrote to and received from the staff at a small used bookstore in London called Marks & Co. Spanning twenty years of correspondence, starting right after World War II, this book is a love letter to books. I almost want to rush out and find the same books Ms. Hanff requested to see if I can discover the same passion she experienced – and I can tell that these are all books I would never touch normally, full of biographies and poetry and the like.

The letters are so wonderfully charming and brimming with personality that I had to check multiple times to make sure that it was actually non-fiction.

I feel at such a loss to describe how wonderful this book is. I want to write like Ms. Hanff someday. I want to bring back this fabulous epistolary tradition.

And I think I need to move to London. Well, Great Britain. Someday…

For now, I am going to purchase my own copy of this amazing little book and reread it about twenty more times, and then see what other perfectly delightful books I can find just like this. And maybe try out a few of Ms. Hanff’s favorites along the way…

84, Charing Cross Road was published on April 13th, 2012, under the Books, Discoveries category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

The Difference a Day Makes

In the past two days, I have had two conversations about the importance of an online presence as a sort of ongoing resume or CV – particularly for people, like me, who are interested in careers in the writing or social media worlds. I figure that must be some sort of sign, and I’m taking it upon myself to round out the trio required to fulfill the “good things come in threes” quota.

My conversation yesterday allowed me to air my doubts about applying this to myself at this point in my life. I have a job I am very happy in, but don’t particularly think I would – or even should – blog about. My life is rather boring, considering about 12 hours a day are taken up with either working or commuting, and weekends are either family affairs or spent vegging out. And I don’t particularly care to become a food/crafting/lifestyle blogger (far too much effort – I don’t know how they do it!).

Today’s conversation made me consider all the positive aspects of at least giving it a try. Having a dead blog does me absolutely no good.

Today, I realized that I want to write, I want an online written presence, and all I have to do is look around for content. On my 20-minute walk to the train after work today, I came up with a variety of things to eventually turn into posts. Granted, by the time I found a seat on the train, most had fled my mind, but if this is a regular occurrence and even one sticks around, I’m not in bad shape. The problem then is holding on long enough to return home to my computer, or struggling to type it up on my phone (as I did with this here post).

So here I am, resurrecting my old blog. If anyone subscribed to it oh-so-long ago, hi! Otherwise, hi as well!

And of course I only recently went through my social media profiles to remove this URL…

The Difference a Day Makes was published on April 12th, 2012, under the C'est la vie category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.