Wednesday, December 06, 2006

mortified

Have you heard about this?
Mortified is a comic excavation of teen angst artifacts (journals, poems, letters, lyrics, home movies, schoolwork) as shared by their original authors... in front of total strangers.

I was a very poor journal keeper, but for some reason I did hang on to the one I tried to keep as a teenager and I'm actually so glad to have it to look back on even though some parts are truly mortifying. I wonder if that's how I'll feel about this blog some day?

here are a couple of not too mortifying excerpts:
1/4/81 - My New Year's resolution is to keep a day-by-day diary. No matter how small an entry...Now on to more important things. Today in Sunday School we did an interesting exercise. We listed what we think are our good or bad qualities. This is what I put for myself. good - athletic, pretty smart, honest. bad - shy, procrastinating, self-pity, sometimes self-centered.
that day-by-day thing lasted about 3 days, I can't believe I listed athletic as my first good attribute (where's the athelete now)?
1/25/82 - Oops! Got a little lazy. Well if you can't tell today is Christmas Day. It sure doesn't have all the mystique it used to. I guess I'm too old to be the innocent child listening to stories of Christ and be amazed by Santa and too young to know the joy of giving the gift of this love to a child. I guess being a teenager there are more important things to worry about like: will that guy ever call again; am I good enough or bad enough for these people; do guys think I'm weird, etc. I don't know why things like this can get in the way of the celebration of the greatest happening in our history, but it does. Speaking for myself whenever I give Christ, world problems or anything of real importance a little thought it's really scary. In our society you can think about world problems and get depressed or scared to death because of the destruction that is possible, then you think of how God can save you from this and you become scared because you have grown away from him for some reason. I don't mean to sound so somber I really did have a good time this Christmas its just that sometimes I let really dumb things distract me from ... life!
do you hear the twilight zone theme playing too?

The true treasures I found on this trip down memory lane were the notes from others that I saved, they had me crying this morning. Go find your teenage angst, it's fascinating stuff!