The book

Running the blog is not my first instance of dabbling in writing. I’ve been sharing my thoughts with the visitors of this site for over three and a half years, but long before setting up the blog, once I committed a longer piece of writing.

It was the summer of 2004, I was sixteen at that time and I can’t affirm these were the happiest months in my life. For sure I needed a katharsis and writing a 134-pages long book, which I’ve never given a title, helped me take some of the toxic thoughts off my chest and break free from some memories. My work covered over two years of my adolescent life, spanning from 21 May 2002 to 31 August 2004. The end of the book coincided with the last day of writing it (I’d started works on 19 July 2004). The script, consisting of 12 chapters (actually 10 have been completed, two ones, covering the period between 8 May and 31 December 2003 were supposed to be supplemented later, but I’ve never followed out this plan) dealt with matters most important for a typical teenager, i.e. friendships, first affections, family affairs, school. The writing provided insight into tribulations of ordinary life – joys intermingled with sorrows, downs were followed by ups, failures were outshined by successes. Notably, I wrote everything off my memory, I didn’t have to recourse to any notes to bring back with accuracy most important moments from recent over two years of my life.

In the last days of August 2004 I shared the book, sending the copies via e-mails, with my closest friends. It went down well, was praised for good style and maturity and criticised for my ease and shamelessness in exposing my inner-most feelings to any audience. On the last day of summer holidays of 2004, having discharged all the loads off my mind, I secured the file containing the book with a password and left it on my hard disk. I’ve never printed a copy of the book, as the I concealed the writing from my parents. They actually realised I was writing something, as it took some time to compile an over a hundred-page-long work, but were left unaware of what the book dwelled on. Probably some excerpts of it would fill them with dread and for some they would tell me to look for a new home. The book was safely copied to a new hard disk of my laptop, as I changed computer in 2006 and stayed there until June 2010.

From the very moment of closing the book, I had no courage to revert to it, nor to read it over. The mere thought of reliving the moments I depicted there made me want to puke. Later, as I became more focused on mundane issues, such as those mentioned in the name of this blog, and less emotional, I didn’t even feel the need to reopen my work. In June 2010 the file was wiped out with most of my hard disk’s content. I easily came to terms with the loss of the book as I my turbulent teenage years were meant to be left behind.

Just some time ago, while drifting somewhere between cloud nine and slough of despond, I felt the strong need to relive some moments from before almost 10 years. Coming by the book was anything, but an easy job; I had to stoop low to get the only printed copy of it (no electronic version has been saved), but eventually the coveted 134 pages came into my hands.

For a few days I was keeping it in a glove compartment of my car and hanging back on getting to grips with my past, but last Friday I finally took it out of the car, smuggled in my briefcase to the house and put into one of several binders containing study materials, so that it could not be found easily.

I read the book almost from cover to cover on Saturday – Sunday night last weekend. I must admit I have skipped a few pages, as at some moments I was running out of courage to confront myself my past emotions, but I did manage to overcome my fear. Felt like a healing…

Looking at the book from the perspective of being eight years older than when writing it, I must assert in some respects I changed much, in others, I haven’t evolved at all. In terms of style at times the writing seems superb, at times mediocre of worse. At times the author appears very childish, at times mature. Today I could tweak it (note it’s been written in Polish) and rearrange a lot, still leaving the purport untouched. I would edit out childish comments, irrelevant details and probably leave the rest out, as committed into paper then. The two missing chapters will remain unwritten forever. I can’t recall now eight months of 2003 to cover them day by day, nor would I have any pleasure in looking back on those days. The book will be preserved in the form I got hold of it ever after.

PS. As some of you have noticed, there have been some deviations from the dreary posting schedule (i.e. one post a week each Sunday). Don’t expect any news this weekend, as I’m staying at work overtime to co-ordinate implementation of a new IT tool, the same overtime job is scheduled in two and four weeks over weekends. Plus tomorrow evening I’m heading to Łódź for another friend’s wedding (alas this time skipping the reception for abovementioned reasons).