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Header and profile image from Paper Raindrops.
Maybe it’s because I was listening to Mazzy Star on YouTube, but I’ve got a real hankering for my teen years this week. I am not one of those people who is stuck in the past and thinks high school was my peak, but I sometimes miss the endless days of school and summer nights spent cruising with friends. I miss those days where my only real responsibilities were to get good grades, help out around the house, participate in school activities, and write thank you notes for gifts received. While I didn’t live it like this at the time, I remember myself as being one big ball of potential. And I like that. That attracts me to younger people at this point in my life.
Perhaps that is why the blog Paper Raindrops appeals to me so much. There, you can find the musings, projects and preoccupations of Inna, a creative teenager who enjoys nature, amusing people by paying for things with $2 bills, dancing ballet, and making stuff. She also really enjoys being weird. I revel in my own weirdness (and was especially into being different when I was a teenager), and I enjoy reading about life from a teen’s perspective now. It reminds me of my own teen years, and I wonder how I would have approached blogging if I had done it fifteen years ago, at 15 rather than 30. I am certain I would have been incredibly earnest no matter the topic. Right and Wrong would have been as clear as Black and White. I would have showcased a lot of odd garage sale and thriftstore finds (tee hee, I may still). I might not be so keen on some of my past treasures now, but they really informed and helped me develop my current style. I was concerned about the following, as well as many other subjects: hard rock, Rush, Art (especially Vermeer and Caravaggio), books I loved, unexplained phenomena, aliens, Albert Einstein, Religion and God, Ally McBeal, figuring out who I was and who I was going to be, what made me different and unique, making clothes out of nontraditional materials, history, current events, the 1960s and Woodstock, Janis Joplin, disarmament, peace, freedom and justice, writing (including journalism and bad poetry), language, falling in love, how in the heck to get a boyfriend, making online friends, and getting over my shyness.
Blogs from younger ladies, like Inna of Paper Raindrops, allow me to indulge the teen who still lingers within. Let me know what you think of Paper Raindrops. What would you have blogged about as a teen? If you ARE a teen, what topics interest you?
Reliving my high school days from the safety of my desk chair,
Alison
Oh wow! Thank you so much for doing this about me! I feel very special now. ;)
ReplyDeleteOh! That was fun! I just went over to check out Paper Raindrops...and I am SO doing her panty-hose screen-printing thinga-majig! I told her as much. :)
ReplyDeleteI would have blogged about Angela Chase and Jordan Catalano. And Jengas, and Etnies, cute sk8r boys, baby-t's found at the thrift store, and putting glitter on my face. About the dichotomy of being Editor-in-Chief of the Yearbook and a straight-A student, while cutting class to go hill jumping. About painting yard-sale furniture and decorating my room, reading Gone with the Wind AGAIN, the Beastie Boys, Everclear, concerts at the Amphitheater, and feeling stifled by a small town. I probably would have blogged about discovering ART at the Nelson, and trying to feel cool by hanging out at coffee shops in Westport. About meeting a cute boy on an Academic Bowl outing, deciding I wanted to study Graphic Design, about loving art class the most, and sleeping in Civics. I would have expressed frustration at not really belonging to any category of a clique-y, label-loving high school. Well, probably that I *hated* that innate need to categorize. About feeling an outsider, waiting to break free, while striving to be different, independent, arty, free-spirited, and well read. I would have pretended to be confident, just like I often did in real life.
(Ok. I DO blog about some of that stuff.) HA!
But who knows? The internet was pretty much non-exsistant when we were freshmeat, and barely 1.0 when we graduated...who knows how broadly our horizons would have been stretched, how much we could have discovered of the outside world and pop culture, how much different our experiences in high school would have been? On the other hand, would it have been that much more overwhelming? We would have grown up so much faster. We'd have played outside less.
I am rambling. BUT I really enjoyed this post! That is all. :)
I totally monopolized your comment section! Sorry, I got carried away. Maybe I should have just posted it to my own blog. (eeep, maybe I WILL.) Sometimes I don't realize how wordy I am!
ReplyDeleteNo, I love what you said! And I would have blogged about some of those same "issues" myself. :) I was very much tuned in to the Internet, but I got my fix making friends through the Message Boards on AOL. I would really like to know what some of those long-distance pals are up to now.
ReplyDeleteInna, it was my pleasure. :) I think your blog is just lovely.
ReplyDeleteA-totally. It *was* all about instant messaging. AOL, definitely. But the interwebs were static. Strange to think back to.
ReplyDeleteThat is definitely the case! The meaning was in the connections that could be made, rather than the mediation. Hmm...
ReplyDelete