People have a lot to say about the upcoming year. I’ve been monitoring the #10yearsago hashtag on Twitter. If you cut through the noise, there’s a lot of interesting stuff there – examples of humanity. Collectively, we like to reflect on change and the passage of time, especially when we hit our arbitrary big base-ten milestone years. There’s no harm in that, and I am no different.
Ten years ago, I was nine years old. My family had not yet moved to Dover Plains or even to Carmel, the community I lived in before moving to Dover. I spent most of my time playing video games, and struggled in school. I had a hole in my ear drum that prevented me from taking normal showers or swimming with my friends. Never had I operated a modern personal computer. A good deal of my mental energy was absorbed by jingles on TV, some that celebrated a new millennia.
In these ten years, I studied, worked, laughed, and cried. I took hundreds of standardized tests, met many people, and spoke dozens of million of words. I grew closer to some people, and drifted away from others. I had my fair share of heartache, but publicly and unashamedly fell for a beautiful woman at Tufts University.
Although that brief story seems pretty special to me, I bet it’s unremarkable to you. With some luck, your story has similar themes of progress and development. After all, a lot happens in ten years. In these last ten, many of us became completely different people, with something still recognizable from our pasts.
I love looking back every once in a while. It’s comforting, and I benefit as a person by remembering who I was, where I came from, and who helped me get where I am; it’s that benefit that pushes my evangelism of journaling.
If you’re not already taking a few moments a day to jot down what you’re thinking, you’re not really getting the full benefit of these collective, reflective moments. Although I’m not an expert on memory formation, I know you’re missing a lot if you don’t write stuff down. To reflect on what remains in our heads over a long period is incomplete; leave notes to yourself to piece together a more complete narrative.
Entering this new year, give journaling a shot. If you’re celebrating the dawn of a new decade tonight, remember to remember it.
). Anyway, seeing as how you went through all of this already, I was wondering if you could answer one of my major questions with a unique perspective, seeing as to how you had to deal with it (my tympanoplasty will be done by going into the ear from making the incision behind the ear, not through the ear canal, by the way). After your surgery, how did you manage to wash your ear and hair in the shower without getting water/soap/shampoo on or in the wound or your ear?