I'm a neat freak. Regularly I take a look at all of the blogs that I link to, and see whether anyone's been updating or not. I guess it's my past as an aspiring computer geek, buying books on web design and hard-coding in between school breaks: a bit of advice I gleaned from one goes something like, "don't post anything if you won't update it anyway." Nobody likes to see an under construction page, it argued. So, whenever I see a blog that's not been updated for months, or has disappeared entirely from the face of the earth, off goes the thumbnail. Toss!

So all of those blogs I used to read have, well, faded into oblivion. So many people have wondered how I still manage to post entries on an almost-daily basis, despite being drowned with obligations, work-related or otherwise. I myself have wondered, too, how I managed to keep up with all the writing while so many of my blogging friends have stopped entirely. Obligations have, of course, caught up with all of us by then. It was definitely a different thing during my first four terms in college - I couldn't keep up, or I haven't learned to keep up, with all the new entries, even if they were all just pasted online conversations, or stuff that I didn't understand.

I am still bored in the office, for the last four hours of my shift or so. Rather than be bothered by exclusive conversations - oh, I'm sorry, I still was - I was bringing myself back to years that have passed.

"Caps lock for you!"

That, by the way, was something that I never was a part of. But funny, isn't it? It was Nico and Kim, an inside joke that only the members of the BonoSoc probably understood, posted quite a handful of times. On the same months, there were a handful of thank-yous to classmate after classmate after classmate, or those terms of endearment, like Lau being Kim's "girlfriend", or something like it.

Now, me not understanding it was not a good thing. I have an ego, and it hasn't been nurtured, more so during my first years in a really big place. Long-term readers are perhaps more than familiar with my many struggles adjusting, with me thinking about whether I'd be able to make any friends, and whether my blockmates actually give a toss about me or are more than willing to fake the friendship and stab my back. Quite simply, it's because I never really got up to speed.

Three years later, I was having lunch with Valerie, for some peculiar reason - she wanted spaghetti, I didn't have any plans, she started everything. While telling the already-scratchy story of three years of (differently-placed) obscurity, I realized again how much fun those old times have been. None of those stories really made it to the conversation - my mindset was still on a later time period - but for some reason, I missed it all over again. Funny thinking that three years ago, I was anxious and depressed, and three years later, I would miss it as if it was the most blissful thing that ever happened to my life. And I am anxious and depressed, too.

Back at the office, I began browsing all those old blog entries, from all those blogs that I have removed from my links because they weren't updating anymore. So there I was, back on Kim's blog, and all those entries about inside jokes and newly-formed lovebirds. The end came with the apologies, a fairly controversial move on her part. It was almost two years ago. Suddenly that's forgotten and glossed over. Human nature, at the very least.

And Caresse's blog entries have disappeared, perhaps after the split-up. And Malia's blog has disappeared altogether. And Jana's blog is still stuck on a year-old time warp about final exams. That kind of stuff.

Thanks to my sickly ego, I started looking for those old blog entries that actually mention my name, almost always in a good light, and only because they won't dare tell me if it's otherwise, for sure. I found a handful. The next thing you know, you're thinking too much again, and you realize that you're in the same situation as you were three years ago. Later, we'll have these conversations about different people, with different people. It's a good thing the connections are still there and the meet-ups are more than possible.

Maybe in the future my situation with these people will change.