My editor, Nora, told me that writing an opinion column was akin to having a time capsule of a specific year in your life. Some say that your editor is usually right, and after working with mine all semester, I finally have the experience to agree. 

Working with an editor led to so many uncomfortable feelings that ignoring their footprint just wouldn’t be fair. For the first time, someone was objectively assessing my raw writings, making cuts and suggestions. For the first time, I couldn’t sit with my writing as long as I otherwise obsessively would, making it a dreadful kind of exposure therapy. 

The Friday before dead week, I ran into her on campus. I’m a crier by nature, but it sometimes catches me unaware, and my eyes misted as I thanked Nora because I meant it. I appreciated the way she handled my vulnerability. As scary as it can be, there are advantages to a collaborative editing process — the push to interrogate every idea, the fresh way of seeing my words with someone else’s eyes. This is a season of being humbled, and while I often joke about being a grandpa compared to the students around me, I’ve lived long enough to know that humility bears fruit. 

In my attempt to make my life comprehensible to myself and others, writing this column felt like being an editor of my own memories. Which ones are most relevant? Which ones stick to me like barnacles on a ship’s hull, refusing to leave? So much of my column has been about how my past has informed the present. But when I sift through my personal history, it’s surprising which memories are most salient. 

Many of the things that seemed most urgent at the time have faded entirely from memory. I can’t remember what my eighth-grade self was most motivated by or aspired to, but I vividly remember taping index cards to the insides of my sweatshirt and under my shorts so I could cheat on a test. I remember buying Cup Noodles and a Dr Pepper for a dollar. And if I think long enough about those memories, I start to rebuild an image of who I was then.  

The older I get, the more time seems to constrict. It feels like I moved here last week, but in reality, I’ve been living in Berkeley and shopping the bargain room at the Berkeley Bowl since July. When I went through my old notebooks for a column a few weeks ago, I found a passage from 2009 that said, “Writing (my blog) is one of my favorite things to do … it feels good to form sentences. It’s like having my own magazine column. I’ve always wanted that or at least think it’d be fun.” Immediately, I Slacked a picture of it to Nora. That was 16 years ago, and coincidentally, the same year I dropped out of college. It’s all very meta. 

In 10 years, I might forget the specific edits my editor made, the elation I had after receiving an email saying I’d gotten the position. Eventually, I might forget the starkness of Doe Library against a robin’s-egg blue sky, the fire under my ass to turn in an essay by 11:59 p.m., the echoes of coughing in the lecture hall, the peevish crowd riding the 52 bus to campus, my friend popping out of a bush to surprise me after school, a classmate waving from across Memorial Glade. All these little things are defining my present, but will fade into the past and become part of the time capsule sooner than I’d like. I won’t get to decide what sticks. 

We can’t possibly remember everything about our lives or explain it in a gratifying way, not with how slippery memories can be. Maybe what makes me a writer is the fact that I keep trying.Â