a picture is worth a thousand words.

What do you do with the pictures of memories you want to forget?

That sounds incredibly girly and angsty and like something a 16-year-old would scrawl across a photo of a girl looking out a window (wearing a cute outfit, of course) with her hair hanging down blocking half her face and post on tumblr or weheartit or something.  But I'm actually serious.

When I moved back home, I managed to somehow misplace every single photo album and picture I'd had with me at college.  And I used to be a biiiiiig picture taker, so that means I lost 5 filled photo albums and about 4 massive envelopes stuffed with pictures.  It was almost 2000 prints, somehow hiding somewhere in my room.

I found them the other day, which was awesome since one was an album from my Europe days and a bunch from my last year of college.  But three of the envelopes are filled with roughly 800 photos from my first year of college.  And I know I'm always elusive about that time of my life, but really...it wasn't good.  Every day is a struggle to get past the residual issues, to understand and accept and learn from what happened.  But every day is also a terrible little dip back into a place I never want to go again.

Part of me wants to keep the pictures.  Store them away so that some day, in the hopes that eventually when I do see them again, I'll be able to look back, maybe smile at some of the good times (few as they were, they were there), and know that I'm finally, finally ok.  Part of me holds onto the fact that as painful as it all was, they are a part of my life, and it was documented for a reason.  That maybe I'll see the happy times in the photos and be able to focus simply on those, and not of what happened around these times.  Those photos used to represent what I thought was the best year of my life (until...), and I can't just forget that they used to be really treasured to me.

But at the same time...I don't really want to be reminded of it.  Everything is seared into my brain anyway, the memories will always be there to torment me ever so slightly.  I don't need the pictures to act as physical evidence.  Seeing me laughing, being group hugged by a group of boys in my dorm only makes me see the calm before the storm, only serves as a way to emphasize just how deeply they all disappointed and hurt me.  I can't see the pictures of me and the girls in our Halloween get-ups without seeing the terrible people they turned into.  The photos are one more way that year will haunt me.

One of the few photos from that time I still love. This kid never hurt me <3  And I swear I do not normally take photos like such an idiot, he goaded me into it!

Now I don't know what to do. I'm really bad at throwing away pictures, by the way.  I don't know what it is, but something about photos is really sentimental and sweet and special to me.  Even if sometimes they don't remind us of the greatest times, they still mean a lot to me.  I mean, seriously, when my house was evacuated for all the wildfires that ripped apart my beloved little suburb back in 2007, I directed my family to take 2 things from my room: the binder that holds all the letters my dad sent me when I was ages 2-4 and he was away on the ship, and the two boxes in my closet that held my elementary school journals and all the photos from my entire life.  Family, writing, and memories--that's my life.

So, do you toss photos?  Can you just let them go?  Do you believe in hanging onto them for the sake of it?

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A little bit of documentary love.

Lately I've been really into watching documentaries.  I felt like I was getting into some little-known subculture and first, got scared that I was getting too hip for my own good.  But then second, the very same day that I realized I was getting into documentaries, Joanna at A Cup of Jo made a post about her favourite docs.  And I realized if one of the most popular blogs on the internet discusses docs and then garners 224 comments of documentary recommendations...I'm not suddenly privy into some super secret underground club.  In fact, I'm pretty much boarding the trendy train as it happens.

But I don't care, because holy shit this new interest has opened up so many freakin' frakkin' windows!  Or DVD boxes, in this case.  I read through most of the comments on Joanna's post so I could get some recommendations as to what to watch...let's just say, it's going to take me a little time to get through 120 documentaries.

The ones pictured at the top of the post are the ones I've watched in the past week, and I decided to do short 1-line reviews of each.  I've also linked each title to its respective trailer, if you wish to find out more.
No Impact Man: Despite the fact I am most definitely not on the forefront of green, sustained living, this one definitely made me consider my own life as I was completely entertained by this family and their dynamic.  Recommended.
Frontrunners: Following the high school student elections at the most prestigious public high school of New York City, I was surprisingly drawn into each of the featured kids and who they turned out to be--and I actually found I was eager to know who would win! (Which is strange, since I didn't even care about my own high school's student elections.)
Mad Hot Ballroom: The cutest, most adorable children ever, ballroom dancing through school programs at the ripe age of 11 and 12 working towards a trophy from the city-wide school ballroom competition; I really don't think you could find the most open, eager and honest subjects anywhere else, and I loved watching them all interact (tell me, would you have wanted to hold the waist/hand of a boy/girl when you were 11?).  Highly, highly recommended.
Radiant City: Perhaps it's because I myself currently live in the suburbs, I found this documentary about suburban life and the culture it creates to be extremely skewed and not at all fair; even the "twist" towards the end, while interesting, did not win me over in the least--in fact, it made me like it even less. (I did, however, love the boy in it.)
Spellbound: There's nothing I could really say about this film to properly express how amazing it is; highlighting seven regular kid's lives who participate in the National Spelling Bee, you would never think words and spelling could become such a lesson and moral theme to a life.  Could not recommend more.
Helvetica: Though I'm not sure people who aren't typography/graphic design nuts will enjoy this, I found it incredibly interesting and really made me want to notice the things around me more.  Recommended for the artist in all of us.

I'm looking forward to watching more, and this may become something of a recurring thing if my interest stays.  Anyone else really like documentaries?  I'm open for suggestions!

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Not too much writing for today...

How about some super-duper exciting images from my day?!

 Milk chocolate vanilla cupcake my brother's girlfriend bought me! Not normally a big Sprinkles girl, but I still enjoy this.

Book I am currently reading. The author is an alumni of my college! And is incredibly nice in real life. And a brilliant, talented writer.  And really hot.  You know, priorities.

I thought I'd show you where all your bloggessa's work happens. Yup, sitting cross-legged on the living room couch.

Because this is my real desk in my room. Currently non-functional except as a drop off point. And you can see my HP bag from Comic-con last year!

I use Christmas stationary year round because it's just so darn cute! Designing a Header for a website I'm working on.  Excuse the crappy rushed handwriting, and obviously I need to work on my spatial planning...

Finally got my Print Screen button to work; was testing it on my desktop so I figured I'd put up the picture. This is incredibly cluttered, in my opinion.  Click for the larger version, if you would like to see my attempting-to-be-funny comments.

The current soundtrack to this blog post.  Yep, that's all Glee music.

All those blue labels?  That's all blog comments/emails I need to get back to.  Sincere, sincere apologies!  Click for larger version if you want to snoop my inbox (which, really, who wouldn't?) and see the thousands of tabs I have open pertaining to grad school and research.  And why yes, I do indeed have a Big Bang Theory themed Firefox!

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