Keeping Track

I suppose that the greater majority of people these days have their own textual mediums for introspection, retrospection, and the recording of the high and low points of their lives. Traditionally, one might use a notebook journal to achieve this purpose. A contemporary form of a journal would be a blog, which in comparison to notebooks, offers a range of utilities from the convenient uploading of pictures and music to real-time features such as chat-boxes. It is also said to suit people who have more exhibitionistic tendencies (exhibition of the outward and inward life... Something compels me to write about this at length. Must remember.)

I've lately come to feel that one of the best ways of capturing snapshots of our past is not through a medium that we actively undertake, but one that is present in almost all web communities and utilities, namely the 'SENT' folder.

It is highly unlikely (unless you have a neurosis for virtual housekeeping) that any of us take pains to regularly empty our sent folder, even more so for people who do not engage in the forwarding of chain emails and who thus have relatively empty sent folders. My own 'sent' folder contains copies of emails that I sent from this year, all the way back to when I was Secondary 3 or so. I guess that all of us have been more or less aware of this fact that we have a backlog of the way that we communicated with people when we were in our youth (relative youth).

I am convicted of the effectiveness and potency of this backlog in portraying my youth because of the acute feelings of dread and apprehension I get when I consider opening it and looking at its contents (Although I think this feeling varies from person to person, depending on their maturity growth curve gradient). When we sent messages through email, for example, I doubt that anybody goes through the mental process of subconsciously editting their messages so that it will look acceptable when they read it in their 'sent' folders after a few years. The messages are undistilled and perfect preservations of communications, the style and contents of which reveal our then childish way of looking at the world. The thought of some of the messages that I'd sent in previous years makes me queasy for the utter ignorance, lack of awareness or wisdom, and inappropriate whimsy that was apparent in them.

So noob. It could be described as the noobness of a newborn cow... Though I felt bad reading them initially, the feeling passed and I found myself enjoying the reading and reflecting about the past. Haha. So young, so newb... Still noob though.. maybe a bit less noob...