Rule #212. Save personal emails.

Had another great post all typed out, and the stupid Blogger system chose to dump it into the impenetrable vastness of cyberspace. I am NOT gonna type all that again! Not right now, anyway. So here's the bare bones content of what was a brilliant piece of writing, if I dare say so myself:

Yesterday, I dug out the disks containing all the files from my college years: thesis papers, essays, projects, and the like, with the intention of transferring them to a more secure CD (a project I've been wanting to do for several years). I also, to my surprise, delight, and wonder, found a file composed of 350 pages of emails I received during my freshman year at OC!!! Emails that are nine, almost ten years old! For someone with a Swiss cheese memory like mine, these emails are a veritable treasure trove. I didn't read all 350 pages, of course! but I skimmed the file and stopped to read when something caught my eye. Suddenly, I found myself remembering events and feelings I didn't know I'd forgotten. Here are a few highlights:

• the birth of a professor's son.....a son who is now almost 9 years old
• my inconsiderate attitude toward my parents, who only wanted to hear from me
• the number and intensity of fights with my then-boyfriend, and the specifics of what I was upset about
• a classmate's hacking into the OC email system and sending out a bunch of fake emails under my name
• going to my cousin's apartment in Edmond to check on her because no one had heard from her in several days
• I have never forgotten Jarrod, of course.....but I had forgotten how often we emailed each other before he drowned at the end of my freshman year at OC, right after his highschool graduation.
• a crazy group of friends and how we used to email each other multiple times a day, for some reason ;o) ( mostly people I'm no longer in contact with now)
• the number of emails I got from a friend in Germany, whom I now haven't heard from in years
• the wise advice my parents gave me, advice that I mostly ignored to my own detriment

I'm thankful that I've learned and matured since then.

So, the moral of this story is: Save old personal emails, because you never know when you might benefit from looking back on who you were and how others responded to you.

The End.