Roommate J and I have been exchanging page-long e-mails since the summer began. At first they were just updates, funny observations, movie recommendations. Lately they've bounded into the realm of advice, council, and hard-hitting questions about life the universe and everything. If someone asks you a question in person, you blurt out the first thing you think of. This is why oral historians and journalists like to interview people in person. There's definitely value in recording a gut reaction, but, I gotta say, I think Roommate J and I have made more progress on looking at our lives, and where we're going from here, answering each others' written questions and writing responses than a whole year of thinking would yield.
There's something about going back over the e-mails, finding pieces of advice I've given her and what I've written in response to her oft-written question, "What are you doing next?" that frees me up to put together these pieces of text in something resembling a plan.
I started the summer a little lost. (Not Six Feet Under lost, but de Plume lost.) I haven't answered all the questions I drove away from my junior year at Princeton with--nor have I put all my thoughts down in those e-mails--but I've come out the other end of our exchange (which is about to be put on hiatus as Roommate J goes off to visit China and see the mountain of all mountains with her family) with a bit more of a sense of what's important to me, what's worth fighting for, and what's worth leaving behind as I move forward in my life.
I've never been one to spew thoughts out into the air--even my most Irish family members have a mysterious WASPiness to them--but I've discovered recently that if I start typing in Gmail it can be difficult to stop. And typing leads to ideas and ideas lead to thinking and thinking leads to planning.
It should have been obvious (there have been posts, a lot of posts, on this blog like that), but sometimes even I need to be told twice.