As a high schooler, I loved my Xanga. When its popularity decreased and Facebook became the new thing, I apologized to my Xanga and felt guilty for leaving it behind. As time went on, I didn’t see the point in taking it down, so I left it up, filling up a small section of the Internet with my rambling, jumbled, high schooler thoughts. Occasionally I’d go back to it, finding myself somewhat surprised by the good questions younger me was asking, but mostly horrified at the oversharing and complete lack of regard for the true publicness of the Internet.
Not too long ago, Xanga as we knew it ceased to exist. Archives were made available for those not wanting to switch to Xanga 2.0, and, unable to bear the thought of all those words, however embarrassing they sometimes were, being gone forever, I made sure to download mine. Finally, tonight, I uploaded them here, wanting to be able to walk down memory lane through those words should the mood strike me.
But then, for a few horrifying minutes, all of those archives were again public. Right here on this little blog.
As soon as I realized it I went through and changed the settings, but had you been on here at the right time, poking through the archives, you would’ve gotten a taste of High School Brianna.
Back when I scoffed at proper capitalization because I thought it made my writing look cool and casual, and I thought that being a Christian meant you had to share a Bible verse in every post (so, of course, I did).
But every once in a while there were glimpses of the future Brianna, of the way I think and write now. As unpolished as some of these writings were, I think I was picking up on things I didn’t entirely have words for yet because I had only begun to taste their truth. I’ll leave you with a snippet of one of my posts (in its original font, for the full effect), ponderings on the song “The Shadow Proves the Sunshine” by the band Switchfoot.
crooked souls trying to stay up straight
dry eyes in the pouring rain, when
the shadow proves the sunshine
the shadow proves the sunshine
two scared little runaways
hold fast till the break of daylight
when the shadow proves the sunshine
the shadow proves the sunshine
i really like this song. i think it has a good point. without shadows, we wouldn’t be able to appreciate the sunshine, and the shadows prove that the sunshine is really there. i think the same holds true in life. if life was just good good good all the time, and everyone was always happy, we wouldn’t appreciate the happiness…it would just be a way of life. to really be happy, we have to know what sadness feels like, and occasionally we have to be reminded of sadness so we can appreciate happiness.
Til next time…
~Brianna!~
p.s. Have you ever been surprised by things you wrote when you were younger?
The Art of Becoming 