Shyzer.com

In an effort to keep busy for numerous reasons which will never make their way onto Shyzer, I’ve spent a bit of time lately working on Shy. Every member of the original cast received a major overhaul and I added a few people who were missing since I realized it was far too outdated in its previous form. The Aussie cast section was updated as well (mainly Rachael’s and Emma’s. The addition of RA Sarah was supposed to go up as well, but I seemed to have lost the damn bio I typed for her.) The pictures from Gender Bender have been uploaded as promised. I also uploaded ten new pictures to the first page of the Bad Taste Party gallery. And finally, I added a few pictures from Rubix Cube Night in the Other Functions Category. Anyway, if you’re bored and have some time, go check out all the changes.

I was looking for something in the archives this weekend when I found myself reading old entries I made instead of searching for whatever it was that I needed. You know what I realized? There’s some halfway decent stuff in there. I began reading about the Fall Break excursion that Fellner and I took in October ‘03 and an hour or two later, I found that I had read everything I’d posted up until now. For the most part, I can’t stand my writing for I think it’s quite amateurish compared to my favorite blogs, much less my favorite authors. But while reading through my archives, I realized that I had forgotten well over half the stuff I had ever written and for the most part, I enjoyed reading the half-assed commentary I wrote. I honestly felt as if I was reading this stuff for the first time.

This delve back into Shyzer’s past got me thinking about other things I’d written and filed away to spend years deteriorating before ever seeing the light of day again. I used to debate on message boards under a few other names besides Goob and a quick Google cache search found me staring at old arguments I’d heatedly defended. Oh how times, fears, and cares change. Before I knew it, I had found an on-line folder I used to keep of all my old essays, articles, and debates. I found old e-mails, journal entries from when I used to save them to computers instead of printing them out every day like I do now, and countless other things that I’d written and completely forgotten about. As I feverously started copying and pasting thousands of words into a blank text document, furiously editing things as I went, memories began to come flooding back from my younger years. With each old event that I remembered, new memories seemed to spring forth with them and eventually entire chapters of my life that I had utterly looked past were brought back to life.

Who knows, I might just be able to turn some of this stuff into future Shyzer material, where it too will slowly make its way into Shyzer’s archive, thereby one day completing the circle when I sit down and start reading through the archives just like I did yesterday.

Sometimes it’s fun to take a journey back into our past, if not to simply see how far we’ve actually come. Or in some instances, how little progress we’ve made. But the other day made me realize that for as priceless as my journal is to me, as valuable as having an entry for each and every day of my life for the past 9 years is, I can’t rely solely on it to. Sometimes the best ways of remembering something in the future is to just sit down in the middle of the day and write whatever comes to mind.

Kinda like how I do here with Shyzer. Trust me, you’ll thank yourself down the road.