Spring cleaning

I love spring. Everything is fresh and alive and it makes me want to feel fresh and alive! But in order for that to happen, some spring cleaning was required. I manage to be very organized in some aspects of my life, but when it comes to bedrooms, my music room and stuff in general, I have a long way to go. Thank heavens I married Mike who helps me to be better every day! I decided to start with the bedroom today and began sorting out one of the piles of papers I brought from my room back home when we moved here and I ran across some papers which had fallen out of my journal. Among them were lists of "Things I want to be" and "Goals I want to accomplish" dating back to 2004. It was really interesting to see how some of the things I cared about then really don't matter now, but also how the majority of things on the list are still things I'm working on (and probably will be working on for a very long time). While those were interesting, the truly entertaining bit came next. I met Mike in 2002 and we were buddies for a year and it was awesome. His dad was called to be a mission president in Tampico, Mexico and so for three years we e-mailed each other back and forth. When he moved back senior year and we started dating, he printed off our e-mails, compiled them into 'The Mexico Letters' and gave them to me for my birthday. It was one of the most wonderful gifts I've ever received because I was never a fantastic journaler (I'm pretending that is a word) and voila! Thanks to The Mexico Letters, I had a book which covered the events of most of my high school life. Awesome! Later in our senior year, I discovered that there were some e-mails I still had in my inbox and sent folders which were written earlier than the ones Mike had printed off. I decided to print them off and create 'The Prologue' to the Mexico Letters -which I almost did! - in that I printed them off, but never actually created the book (this is a running theme in my life. Unfinished projects! But I shall save that for another post...). I know I should have been cleaning, but I couldn't help myself. I read them all and loved looking back to those years and seeing how a lot of the things Mike and I had worried about as teens have already happened, how much we've changed and in some ways, how we're still the same. Here were some highlights for me: 22 Mar 2004 Rachel: "I want to go really far with the harp...(was entering a competition to play harp in Dublin, Ireland) It would be awesome! I've always wanted to go to Europe." 24 Apr 2012 Rachel: You do end up going to Ireland, and you actually end up majoring in harp performance in London, crazy huh? 26 May 2004 Rachel: "You know what was really scary? For YW's we combined with the RS and did a fashion show from the 20s-present and Tawni and I modeled our mothers' wedding dresses from the 70s and 80s and it was kind of creepy seeing myself in the mirror with her dress and veil on and my hair all done up and thinking, "This could really be me in 5 or so years. Yikes!" And then I was wondering who I would marry, and what if I already know him...?" 24 Apr 2012 Rachel: Well, it was 8 years later that you got married instead of 5 but you did already know the guy at this point. In fact, ironically, the guy you are e-mailing this question to IS the one you end up marrying! Anyway, you get the point. It was really interesting 'hearing' Mike talking about wanting to be a web developer when he 'grows up' and all that jazz. When I finished reading my first thought was that, "Gee! Look how late it is! I'm supposed to be cleaning and I've wasted all this time" but you know, even though our journals are great for our posterity (I'm sure our future kids will have fun reading these) the words we write are for ourselves as well. To remind us of lessons learned, of dreams and goals, and of past experience. It was refreshing to see how far we've come, how many things turned out how we hoped for (and sometimes differently than we expected), and I'm looking forward to the future. Time to start the Nantucket letters I guess!