Exile: the Camp NANOWRIMO project, Part 3

Realizing the patterns

When I started Camp NaNoWriMo a mere 17 days ago, all I knew was that I wanted to rewrite the remains of a 30 year old project. Incidentally, I have not read this project despite being 48,000 words into the rewrite. I had only planned on writing 50,000 words, so it seems as if I'm almost done. I think I still have at least 10,000 to go. It seems this story is worth more than I thought it was originally worth.

At the time that I wrote the initial story, the spring and summer of 1993, I was in flux. I worked at a picture framing franchise, and I lived in Boulder. I moved from Boulder to Denver and I also stopped working at the frame shop to work at the Colorado Department of Health. I also stopped attending classes at Araphoe Community College and I started at Metro State. It was a time of tremendous change. I so seldom think about that time in my life. I have lost all contact with the people I knew then, and I don't go to any of the neighborhoods that I lived or worked in at that time. Plus 30 years is a long time.

I've been an introspective person since a very early age. I've kept a journal since 1990. The journal is something I scribble in daily at times, and other times, I go months without adding to the introspection. I find it funny that there are themes over the years I write about and write about and write about. Those things like who I want to be and lamenting who I am, I think this is what everyone writes about. For instance, these days, I write about the problems I have with the YouTube rabbit hole. I can also expand that to Netflix too. Too much time, and daily, gets lost and wasted just staring passively into the screen. I mean, whatever, right? I'm staring into the screen now, and so are you. But it seems different when looking into a YouTube thing that is both disconnected from reality as well as anything else that might be imaginary.

Last night, like every night, I finished my work and opened up YouTube. I watched the sorts of things I normally watch, fifty shorts and a few how-tos. Then I watched a short video that asked if human beings were meant to be monogamous. Incidentally, I don't know the answer to that as I did not watch it to the end. What I did see, however really affected me.

This physiologist suggest that married people will step out even if they're in a happy relationship because they are trying to recapture who they once were. She suggested that people do things like this because they miss a part of themselves.

I instantly thought about Exile and who I was when I wrote it. I am really trying to recreate who I was when I wrote it as the main character of the book. But it's an idealized version because I am not that person anymore, and I don't remember who that person was, not really. Like I said, too much time. It is fun to think about it, obviously, I'm 48,000 words into thinking about it.

I wonder if there is a pattern to it. I wonder that only because I've written a great many novels and they all seem to center around two specific places and two specific times. Am I trying to relive something? Am I lament who I was? It's a good question only because I'm always revisiting characters and struggles strangely familiar.

But this is funny when I think about it. As I said, I write in a journal, sometimes daily and I have since June 1990. If there is anything I've learned, I do not lament who I was. I am simply amazed that I really have become everything that I wanted to be. Now, if I can kick the YouTube addiction.