Something that is always a giant issue of contention among people roughly my age is when Facebook updates its layout and operating style. It's been this way since I started using the site and each time they update it, everybody gets in a giant fuss about it and complains endlessly about "the new Facebook". Eventually though, everybody gets used to it because they're forced to use it and perhaps because they realize that it is a free social network site, so who the fuck cares?
Hands down the biggest divide over a new Facebook layout was when they introduced the "timeline" feature about a year and a half ago. What "timeline" entailed was the addition of a clickable timeline on the side of your profile which could easily direct you to a certain time of your or somebody else's life, as opposed to a long clicking and scrolling session through somebody's profile. Some of my friends had concerns like "Now anyone can creep (look at) any area of my life right away and I hate the idea of that!" I guess that kind of makes sense, but I feel like nobody is interested in me enough to go and look in the deep nether regions of my Facebook profile. The other side of that coin is that due to former Facebook layouts, if anyone did take the time to do a deep creep on my profile they would just find things like "is seeing the Planet Smashers tonight!" about 10 times in a row and probably give up right away because it is useless and uninteresting information.
I however, am a huge fan of timeline because it has taken my profile and turned it into a digital scrapbook of my life which is very easy for me to navigate. Being the nostalgic son of a gun that I am, I'm fairly prone to looking back at a certain year of my life via my timeline (or this blog!) and reliving a whole bunch of events that I had half-forgotten about. While some people really like to write off their past because they are embarrassed by it, I kind of revel in how awkward and weird my existence is and was. I really like to compare how different I was then and how I'm also still kind of the same. What's that Tim? You want to look through those giant photo albums documenting your first week at university? Click 2007, then click September. Boom. Done.
Like I said, I'm swirling tornado of nostalgia and it can get a little overwhelming when I'm looking back through timeline and all these pictures and lyrics and things are really bringing up some old feelings that I haven't felt in a long time. A lot of the time, this can be good nostalgia. I'll see a picture from a night out or a status update from forever ago that had a good string of comments on it and I immediately think things like "Wow, what a fun night that was." "You know, even though it was a shithole, I really miss Cole Road." "Jesus, I haven't so much as spoken to Stryder in at least 3 years." I like it because, like I said, I'm not embarrassed by what I've done. I like to look back and I like to laugh at the minor mistakes that I made growing up. My life is conveniently documented for me on this website and I love the opportunity to look back upon it.
But there's also obviously bad stuff. I'll come across a cute photo or me teasing an old flame and immediately think about how bad then ended up or how I fucked things up or how I should have acted instead. And that's just life. Sometimes it rules. Sometimes it sucks. Obviously most people would like to just remember the good stuff, but that ain't the way it works Jack, you get it all. I can get pretty fucking sad sometimes and seeing this type of stuff never really helps. I'm pretty fortunate to be surrounded by the people that I am, but I do feel pretty lonely out here most of the time. Before I know it, Deja is on and I have become the sulkmaster supreme. Fortunately I usually know better than to keep digging and looking at these things that really cut me up, despite it being a good kind of hurt.
But the thing that made me sad the most is that when I went back and looked at those few months, there wasn't a trace of her at all, so maybe I should have known all along.
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