On Buried Treasure

still taking awkward selfies after all these years. 

The other night I was waiting for the new Veronica Mars movie to download onto my computer.  Don't even get me started on why I was downloading it instead of going to the theater. Okay, actually I'll just tell you. It's because no fucking movie theater in the entirety of the state of Montana was playing the film. I considered for a fleeting moment driving to Washington to view the movie so that I could see it in a theater, but then realized I wouldn't have a place to stay afterward or a car bud to keep me awake on the drive home. But that's neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is that I was waiting for this movie that I've been waiting for 7 years to finish downloading and I seriously needed to chill the hell out. Tension was running high. 

So I did what any normal person would do, I exhausted Facebook, Thought Catalog, and Pinterest. And then I still had like 71 more minutes of downloading or something, so I got creative. I decided to go through my old draft folder in gmail. Just to you know, see if I had anything good. 

As of this moment, I have 653 drafts in gmail, which I realize is pretty ridiculous. But it's where I go to just jot down a couple of lines I think about or go on pissed off stream-of-consciousness rants. It's my thing. My draft folder is like, really close to my heart. It's also kind of a deep abyss of curiosities and antiquities and embarrassingly shitty writing. 

I don't delve very deep very often. 

But you know, I had some time on my hands and about three beers in my belly, so I dove right in. I found a lot of things. Essays I'd started about my Nana, years before she died. Ranty bitch fits about my best friends in those moments when I actually had the luxury of being close enough to them physically to be annoyed by anything they did, instead of just missing them desperately. And about 200 pages of a story that I started writing four years ago and just kind of ....forgot about. It was all so earnest, you know. I was discovering so much and meaning everything that I felt SO MUCH. 

It was a comfort, you know. To read and think from the voice of the girl that I was, the girl that I'll always be. Romantic and reckless and scared and self-conscious all at once, most of the time. Sometimes I forget myself, all these places that I go, all these things I get swept up in. This was a strong dose of identity. 

Finding my voice, deep and unexpected in my draft folder, it was like finding buried treasure.  

Oh, and Veronica Mars, that was a treasure too.