even the ones with digital watches.

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dateline: innerspace

4 september 1996 11:43 p.m.

It's almost midnight, and I've been sitting here looking at my notes from yesterday and today. About lunch with Derek, and a close encounter with Tim at work, and another Macarena conspiracy theory, and Hawaiian homework, and bumping into an ex again... just now I put down a couple of nasty lines about the MTV Music Awards. There are so many things I want to share about every day. Sometimes, listing off each memorable tidbit works -- like posting series of little snapshots. But sometimes, like tonight, there's just no way I can follow an emotional rant like the one I just wrote with random, unrelated fragments of reflection, or sarcasm, or mirth. So I resist the temptation to tack them onto the end. Resist, because I've already been told three times by readers that I ramble. Resist because I learned my lesson, because I know I killed the intimate, wistful tone in my recollection of my first (and second, and third) "real" kiss with Derek at Sunday's concert because I plunked a volleyball gloat at the bottom. So I tear these scribble-filled pages out, and stare at them. Wishing I could at least commit them to memory, knowing that I could never save these scraps even if I decided to. Although I will throw them away, I'm reluctant to. It feels wasteful to toss even these simple notes of a tiny piece of my life. It's silly, I know. You know, I've even written "snapshots" that I never get around to putting up. For those I've gotten as far as dragging them into my "Trash Can," but I just can't bring myself to click on "Empty Trash." The little bloated icon on my desktop, I see now, is a small reminder of one of my worst vices: a fear of completely letting go of the past. A humbling thought. I need a tape backup for my soul.