Writing is a Time Machine
An excerpt from 2021
Summary: The essay explores how writing functions as a time machine, allowing writers to revisit their past emotional states and moments with the clarity of distance. Through a personal reflection on notes from 2021 Chicago, the author examines writing as a means of communication with their future self while grappling with themes of aging, change, and the fragmented nature of memory during a transitional life phase.
While organizing my Google Drive I came across some of my older writings. There was one section in my notes that upon reading immediately took me back to my apartment in early 2021 Chicago; it beautifully captured how I felt during that time.
Reading it reminded me of a major reason I write at all, for myself in the future. Writing is a Time Machine since it allows us to go back into the moment we originally wrote it, but this time with distance.
I’ve left the section in the disorganized state I found it in since it accurately reflects my mind at the time.
I'm a 23 year old researcher at a top University in a highly paid, low application field. In other words I’m miserable.
Like so many other members of my generation I was born in a world of infinite exposure, unlimited information, and nothing but questions. My educational background is unusual but in a very boring middle class way.
The challenges I have faced seemed hilariously small next to the stories of some of my colleagues. The best of which involve a mothers dying wish, learning geometry from a textbook left at the crack house they were raised in, and a sharp blow to the head that gave someone the ability to do any multiplication problem like a large fleshy ti-84.
I’ve been afraid of change from pretty much the first moment I remember. Although I knew on paper I would get older it had existed in an esoteric ethereal plane of consciousness that I devoted a huge amount of time to “exploring” in my middle teens.
Sadly it is no longer an exploration and instead truly beginning to become a reality. My freshman year of college I had first noticed my hair was thinning, by now the front of my hair looks like the charge of the light brigade, the front line torn apart by testosterone induced artillery fire and the few survivors huddled close to the ground a weakened version of their former self fleeing to the old front line.
The future has became foggy losing the clarity it had previously held, the clarity only a bright kid who has options and wants all of them can have. The past shifted from a continuous tape to instead islands of recollection. Single moments standing out brightly among a sea of mundane madness.
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