The Bookstooge Chronicles: The Freshman Year

~ Bookstooge

I’ve made my way completely through 400 pages of my freshman journal. Like I described in my Midlife Crisis Post, I was equally horrified, amused and entertained. 9/10ths of my entries were centered around girls. This girl, that girl, the next girl, some random girl, a previous girl. I could practically smell the hormones wafting off the pages. But in between my tortured musings on Being Alone Forevah! it was quite the little time capsule.

September 1997 through August 1998 was a wonderful time to be alive if you liked tech. I had a quad speed cdrom and let me tell you, it was 100% better than those measly 2speed ones! What other things popped up? Oh yeah, you didn’t need a passport to go into or come back from Canada. I was a total drama queen and reading about some stuff now makes me realize how out of proportion I would blow things up in my mind. Funnily enough, that STILL happens a lot to me, hahahahaa 😀 Despite being 20, I still fought with my little brother and littler sister like I was 10.

But what stood out to me, in the 400 pages, was my reaction to my first spam email. Do you remember your first? There are a lot of firsts in life but in the late 90’s, spam email wasn’t quite what it is today. I wrote this down in my journal. So cringe along with me as we go back 25 years to a more innocent time when email was only used for good, sigh :-/

2/8/98 – 11pm Saturday
Got a weird e-mail, supposedly from Bill Gates. It is testing some new e-mail tracking software. Once the list reaches 1,000 people, we will all get $1,000 & a free Window98 package. I hope it is real!
If it is bogus, Microsoft will be angry as anything & I bet there will be lawsuits flying.
But I’m hoping & praying it is real. I could really use $1000 & W98. Specially now with my new computer.

Now is that just adorable or what? Makes me want to pinch my younger self’s cheeks and go “ohhh, you cute little thing”. Of course, back then I didn’t have cheeks because I was so skinny, I was skin and bones, poor guy.

But it took me over 6 weeks to read the whole thing because there were times I just had to put it down and give myself a break from myself. Man, I was an intense young man and it really carried over into my words in my journal. At the same time, it has whetted my appetite to read more (but I’m totally not a Narcissist, really!). I am giving myself a 2 month break before diving into my Junior year, as I remember life got super intense for that year and I’m not sure how I’m going to handle it even now.

What is interesting to me is that certain things I wrote I can picture with absolute crystal clarity. I read the words, the situation I describe and I can SEE it perfectly in my mind all over again. Isn’t the mind a wonderful thing? Truly the Psalmist spoke true when he wrote “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.“

Well, I think I’ve talked about myself enough. For today anyway 😉


37 thoughts on “The Bookstooge Chronicles: The Freshman Year”

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  2. This is fascinating stuff. Whenever I’ve gone back to look at old journals I’ve been amazed at what seems to be a totally different person. I don’t even recognize myself.

    I actually started my first website, still going, in 1998. But it was book reviews with nothing personal. I don’t think I’ve changed that much.

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    1. It really is fascinating isn’t it? There is so much I have forgotten (probably w good reason!) so to remember it is great.

      I wish I had my old websites from my blogspot days but I regularly nuked myself whenever I would get melancholic.

      Well, you seem to like Shakespeare more, so that’s a change, right? 🙂

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  3. I was like 3yrs old then, so can’t say I remember any of the joys you speak of 😋
    I don’t think I would want to read a diary from 20yr old me. I was a very sad and panicky person then, who would pick fights (mainly with Dave) over the smallest things and firmly believed nothing was going to be alright.
    I’m glad yours was mainly cringy 😋 I hope the next year won’t be too bad.

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    1. Hahaha Baby You 😉
      I am mainly reading this to remember that kids and young adults can do stupid things wo it being malicious. We’ve got a group of teens growing up at church n I need to be reminded that they’re not mini-adults 😀

      Oh man, I’m holding off because that was the year I fell in love n she fell out of love w me. I’m expecting a LOT of angst, 😂

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    1. 😀
      My diabetes makes me about 10-15 years older. Sure wish I could cash in on that somehow 😅
      And back then, oh man yeah. There’s a reason i liked Luke Skywalker so much

      It really has become dull hasn’t it? I wonder if that’s part of why I’m willing to see experiment on my blog again.

      How’s life treating you? Haven’t seen you around for awhile.

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  9. I don’t know if I wish I had a journal from back in the day or not. Life was so crazy then documenting it wouldn’t have done it full justice anyway. It would have been interesting to learn of specific events or feelings I may have forgotten since then. Cool that you have it to reflect upon.

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  10. What did you study, if I may ask? I guess you are a year or 2 older than me, but it is amazing how people change in 20 years, but at the same time still remain the same.

    Reminds me of a KSR-quote: “Truly we live more lives than one.”

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    1. It was a non-certified Bible school. So pretty much I had the training to be a lay pastor.
      We also learned how to do a wide variety of physical things, like cutting wood, how to wire up a room for electricity, fix a car, paint and carpet a room, etc.

      If it weren’t for the journals showing me otherwise, I’d say I was exactly the same, hahahhaaa. Thank goodness I don’t have to rely just on my memory for that one 😀

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  13. Wow. I’m not sure I would want to go back and read the stuff I was writing back then. I know that I wanted very seriously to be a composer in the Beethoven mould, and would drone on endlessly. But it does make me wonder why I keep writing a journal if I don’t ever see me reading any of it back 🤣

    I know exactly what you mean though, when it comes to that near-perfect recall. Ah, memories! 🫠

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    1. Ahhh, you coulda been a conductah!
      😉

      Secretly, I think I journal so that when the great die back happens historians will have a paper copy and be able to figure out what life was like during this golden age. Of course, if they just use my stuff, they’ll think everyone was lovelorn and angsty all the time, hahahahahaa 😀

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      1. I think part of my reason back then was so that, when I was famous, my biographer would have a wealth of information to use to immortalise the man behind the music 🤪 Instead, I think they’re probably just a terrible chronicle of how disappointed in life I had decided to be 🤣

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    1. I am so thankful that stage of my life behind me. It was exhausting 🙂

      I am very glad to be reading these just to see how far I’ve come (or not, in some cases hahahahaa)

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  16. Ah the joys of youthful angst.😅

    I find it interesting how memory works, that you read something years back and even though you had completely forgot about it, you can suddenly recall with clarity
    ~B

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    1. I tried to be angsty a few weeks ago and just couldn’t do it. I guess I’m fresh out of angst hormones or something 😀
      And I’m glad about that!

      Memory is weird, isn’t it?

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