Sentimentalities

I was packing my books and files into a 16x16x16 box all yesterday, taking my time to figure out what to keep, throw, how to pack it up like a jigsaw puzzle. I had all afternoon and took my time to look through each and every folder, trying to figure out why I kept what I kept. Why was it important, why did I care? All these relics served to remind me of the little bits of past that have shaped who I am.

I came across my spanish folders - I had about 8 folders worth of notes, 3 notebooks full of journal entries and thoughts I used to write en espanol. It's been five years since I've taken any spanish class, and I remember loving it so much that I even endured my 9am comparative political science class with Ronald Inglehart (the hard core commy) just to be able to translate all the poli sci notes into spanish in my head.

I sieved through about 5 folders of printouts of organizational psychology journal articles, about 3 revisions of my honors thesis, one set of notes crinkled from tears shed when my hard drive crashed and I lost 3 days worth of writing and reading, and two notebooks full of ideas for papers and experiments. Btw, the one paper that my lab and I co-authored apparently recently won Best Published Scholarly Article by the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship. How far I've departed from that since.

These all aren't bad things, really. I have always had very varied interests. The only problem I ever had was follow through. :)

Of all the items on my bookshelf, the thing that touched me the most was an email that I printed out. It was from mybestguyfriend@cyberway.com.sg more than 7 years ago on Feb 20, 2001. I've reminisced about him many-a-time, but there's always much to talk about. Goodness gracious, my life might have been very different if he were still around. For starters, we were inspired by My Best Friend's Wedding and made a promise that we'd marry each other if we weren't married by the time we turned 28. hah hah. But again, I was much shorter then. He was the first guy that I got really close to, was way too candid with me, and I probably knew more about him than I wanted to know.

I was re-reading the email earlier tonight when the song One Night by The Corrs came on. That was a song from the last movie we ever watched together (somehow I persuaded him to watch Mad About Mambo), along with a full day of wandering around Takashimaya and eating an Aunt Anne's pretzel. That was around when I first started ballroom dancing, and many months later, I had planned to respond to his email to let him know that I'd won my first ballroom competition. My life's moved so far from that.

I wonder how life would've been different if he had hung around, if I'd kept dancing, done my org research, or escaped to Spain for no good reason (but the language and hot men). Instead, I now live in NY, met super cool people, learned kiteboarding, travelled lots, and did so many random things that not many people have had the opportunity to do. The farewell party will be this Saturday, Oct 25, in NYC. Getting sent off in style. Attend if you can.