2004-10-24
My Old Room
I've been watching my dad's house while he's out of town for a bit, so I've been hanging out in my old room at lunch some days. That was my room for nearly 20 years, and being the geek that I am, spent a lot of time there, so it's filled with memories, mostly good (or at least comfortable) ones.
It's mostly the same as when I moved out more than 8 years ago - the same fake wood panelling on 3 out of 4 walls, the blue shag carpet, the bed. The old desk I first used for my computer is back in there, after being displaced by a proper computer desk for a while. New wallpaper is on the 4th wall, but I know shadowy ghosts of the generic football players that used to adorn the wall are still lurking there - I saw them myself. The closet is more than half full of my stuff still - comics, part of my large computer magazine collection, some toys, and a bunch of paper.
I rarely throw stuff out - it's got to be completely devoid of any present or future use to fit into my unusually narrow definition of the word "garbage". The paper I mention is covered in my scribblings. Notes from school, projects, and loads of computer printouts. Every time I do computer programming I generate page after page of notes - mostly handwritten in spiral-bound graph paper books, occasionally on the dot-matrix printer and that lovely tractor-fed paper. I've got several foot-tall piles of paper and notebooks, and every so often I delight in flipping through these old notes, remembering what game or other project I was working on at the time.
Carla and I have talked about me making a proper office down in the basement of our house. It was sometimes a problem when I was working at home over the summer, trying to keep the kids from being too distracting with the open layout we have right now.
So, my super weird idea would be to recreate my old bedroom here in the new house, to use as an office. Almost all the material could be pulled (wood panelling and carpet especially) from my old room, since my dad eventually wants to replace that old stuff. I wonder if the huge boost of nostalgia would translate into creative energy? Or is that just too weird and sad?
It's mostly the same as when I moved out more than 8 years ago - the same fake wood panelling on 3 out of 4 walls, the blue shag carpet, the bed. The old desk I first used for my computer is back in there, after being displaced by a proper computer desk for a while. New wallpaper is on the 4th wall, but I know shadowy ghosts of the generic football players that used to adorn the wall are still lurking there - I saw them myself. The closet is more than half full of my stuff still - comics, part of my large computer magazine collection, some toys, and a bunch of paper.
I rarely throw stuff out - it's got to be completely devoid of any present or future use to fit into my unusually narrow definition of the word "garbage". The paper I mention is covered in my scribblings. Notes from school, projects, and loads of computer printouts. Every time I do computer programming I generate page after page of notes - mostly handwritten in spiral-bound graph paper books, occasionally on the dot-matrix printer and that lovely tractor-fed paper. I've got several foot-tall piles of paper and notebooks, and every so often I delight in flipping through these old notes, remembering what game or other project I was working on at the time.
Carla and I have talked about me making a proper office down in the basement of our house. It was sometimes a problem when I was working at home over the summer, trying to keep the kids from being too distracting with the open layout we have right now.
So, my super weird idea would be to recreate my old bedroom here in the new house, to use as an office. Almost all the material could be pulled (wood panelling and carpet especially) from my old room, since my dad eventually wants to replace that old stuff. I wonder if the huge boost of nostalgia would translate into creative energy? Or is that just too weird and sad?
