2003-12-07 - 12:59 p.m.

Funny, I've written dozens of entries, but all in my head, and none of them have made it to permanent storage. Coupled with the recent derailing of some long-lived habits like daily flossing and *gasp* even daily showering, I'm forced to realize how little internal stability I have to withstand changes in my outside world.

Not that that's a bad thing, really. I mean, it's bad not to floss every night, but it's not bad that I .. mould myself into the lives of those around me. We are social creatures after all ;)

So, anyway, enough with the guilt of not writing an entry in so long. If there's one recurring theme in my lifle, it's anger and frustration towards myself for not doing well enough. I've had that drilled into me for a long time :P heh.. I hear my gradeschool principal yelling at me that god gave me a great brain, so why am I wasting it?

So unlike most of my entries, a lot has actually happened since the last one. One particularly surprising thing was pulling out the old commodore 64 from Saara's storage cupboard and hooking it up to find out that not only does the unit still work, but all the old disks work as well. Talk about weird.. flipping through these old disks that I'd seen so many times but that now looked so unfamiliar. Knowing which ones I'd played the most because those were the ones with the dirtiest labels, like "Maniac Mansion" whose labels shows how often I'd had to flip it while playing (probably with chip grease on my fingers :P)

The keyboard itself is monolithic, with these huge cumbersome function keys and extra-thick yellowed plastic cover. What a blast seeing it again. Among the most surprising things, for sure, is how well it still works. Hats off to Commodore engineers who designed a keyboard that still has great feel and 100% working parts after all this time and use.

The best part though is the little traces of the younger me that are left strewn across these floppy archives. Sparse sprays of non-standard magnetic data that can't be found in any emulator: bad poems, sad short stories, hilarious letters to friends. Strange introspections, bursts of artistic output, not to mention countless finely-engineered tracks for "Racing Destruction Set". Some programs, most crappy, some interesting.

Just last night I managed to dig some crusty files out of a barely-working disk (my fault for buying cheap BiWay disks). A few had tears squeezing out the sides of my eyes as I tried not to laugh so hard as to wake anyone up. It's strange, most of the stuff I wrote back then sounds exactly as badly written as you would expect a young teen's best literary efforts to sound, but then in amongst the garbage, nay, leaping from the garbage pile and shining before my eyes, are streaks of myself, that same self that has always been, surprising and delighting me with unexpected wit. And tenderness.

So yeah, one file in particular is a strange attempt at a short story where I write about a boy named Todd who writes diary entries. I use a typical device for me, writing a second voice in parentheses, to make the diary come alive and have Todd arguing with himself. The subject of the whole story is Todd's "little problem", namely never starting anything he finishes. Yes, the age-old battle, Carl vs Carl: why aren't you doing better?

The feeling I came away with after experiencing all I'd left behind on my Commodore was that I was glad I'd bothered to dump out my thoughts and creations, no matter how poor the efforts were. Although nothing I did on the Commodore got out to the greater world, no essays made people think more deeply, no programs had an impact on anyone's thoughts, at least I was in there working away, figuring things out and making stabs at what I knew I could do. It made me realize how much power I have now, compared to then. My writings can be shared around the world now, easily. My programs can interact with others now, can be given to others now, can affect others. I have the knowledge to write programs that could change the world. Not in the cowardly viral sense, but in the calamitous establishment-shattering ideal sense.

Hmm. But then I wonder, will I read this text in 10 years and have the same feelings I did when reading my teenage writings? Will I tsk at the self-inflated thoughts of an egomaniacal pipsqueak that no one knows about?

I don't like the sound of my writing voice right now :P It sounds so elaborate and .. posed? Yeah, like smiling for the camera. I hate that.

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