Memory Lane

I had a yoga class this morning, so I'm feeling all stretchy and relaxed, and since it's a cold day, the temptation is to snuggle under a blanket and just read.

Fortunately, that's exactly what today's work requires! I have a few e-mails to send or respond to, and then I have some reference books to go through because I have an idea about the book I'm working on that needs some development, and I stopped by the library on the way home from yoga to pick up the books I need. I've got a theme in the works and I can feel the story coming together. This will be the perfect day to burrow under a blanket with a book and a notebook and do some planning and plotting.

Meanwhile, I got the office closets mostly cleared out over the weekend and have started putting other stuff in them. I'm discovering floor space. Soon I may achieve enough floor space for a plumber to easily access the upstairs bathroom.

The boxes I was sorting through were keepsake boxes from high school, college and my first job. There was a lot of stuff from the first job that I was able to trash, though I did keep all the work samples. I seriously doubt that work I did more than twenty years ago would be considered relevant for any job hunting I did now, in case the writing thing doesn't work out, but I like the idea of having them, just in case. I can always use this kind of stuff for career day-type talks. The high school memento box is pretty small, so I may make decisions on that later. I don't have kids to show these to, but again, since I'm now writing some YA I may be able to use that to show kids what I was doing at their age.

I did have one fun discovery in the first job box. I had the materials from a conference I went to in 1993 on my first trip to Washington, D.C. It was a conference for university PR and communications professionals, and I'm pretty sure I was the youngest person there. During the opening session, I looked around the room at the other attendees and noticed that there was one youngish guy who was kind of cute. I found myself daydreaming about how cool it would be if I could talk to him. And then during the first coffee break between sessions, I was totally surprised when he came up to me to talk. We ended up hanging around together for most of the rest of the conference, went to lunch on our own together that day and to dinner with a group that night. We made enough of a connection that we might have stayed in touch if e-mail had been more of a thing (I didn't get e-mail at work until the following year), but not enough of a connection to bother with long-distance phone calls or snail mail. I'd thought about him off and on over the years, mostly because that was one of the few instances where reality actually lived up to fantasy and came close to the novel that was playing out in my head, but he had a tricky last name, so all I remembered about him was his first name and where he worked. So when I found that conference folder, it turned out to have a roster of conference attendees, so I saw his last name. On a whim, I Googled him, and it turns out that he's become rather well-known. He contributes to a major newspaper and has written a couple of non-fiction books. I'd actually heard of him, but hadn't made the connection with the guy from the conference, probably because what I'd read didn't include photos and the subject he ended up specializing in wasn't something that came up in conversation. With the photos, I'm sure it's the same guy. It was kind of nice getting that trip back down memory lane to a really good time and to find out that he's done so well (and is still cute, but married now). I guess neither of us stayed in university PR. Some of my friends have been saying I should contact him, but I suspect that conference was far more meaningful to me than it was to him and I don't expect him to remember it at all, and I don't want to come across as a creepy stalker.

Now off to crawl under a blanket with my reference books.