things that make me tired

One of the things I noticed about the reunion this weekend was how many people seem to still be dwelling on the petty melodramas that happened in college. To be fair, much of this is probably related to the setting -- being back on campus, back among the people who were around back then, many of whom you haven't seen since. So it's probably not like most of these people are sitting around at home all the time thinking, "I still hate Person A for what s/he did/said to me five years ago! That Bitch! I hope I see him/her at the reunion so I can deliberately snub him/her!"

But still. It kind of irked me, and/or made me sad, to see the way so many people seemed incapable of talking about anything *new*. Maybe I'm mostly thinking of one person in particular, who not only had to make sure that I remembered her big blow-up with Person A (musical-theater stuff), but also made a point of telling me this whole story about how a freshman asked her one time why the musical-theater scene at Oberlin was the way it was, and she said, "just wait until Person A and I have graduated and then you guys can get things in order again." I just thought that was unbelievably arrogant. Not so much that she said this to the freshman -- hell, we all said stupid arrogant shit like that in college -- but that, six years later, she felt the need to tell me about it. You know?

Another friend spent a fair amount of time obsessing about his crush on Person B and the fact that seeing her again made all these feelings come back to him. I can sympathize, to an extent, because he had a thing for her and she never reciprocated and it was all sad and shit. Who hasn't been there? But I guess my point is that it made me realize how far I've come personally. I still harbor a lot of resentment about a lot of things that happened, but mostly I don't dwell on them and I just let them go. I mean, when I saw Person C, who *severely* screwed me over in regard to housing arrangements my first year (and there was some reverse-racism going on, long story), I didn't get all upset. It didn't bring back all those horrible feelings. I just thought, "oh look, there's Person C" and then dismissed it from my mind. Even with more recent things, like when Person D screwed me over even MORE severely over housing arrangements back in '99... I still get mad and sad about that, because we were such good friends (I thought) and her actions killed our friendship and that's sad. But the feelings are all muted, and overlaying it all is a sense of, "well, that happened, but it's in the past now."

And it sort of relates, in my mind, to jennyo's recent posts about what she calls "bitter old fic queens," which as I read it means people in the fanfic world who are always bitching about how much better the fandom world used to be and how the newbies don't understand/respect the old traditions and the older people in the fandom. I've been through that kind of thing far too many times, and it's a big part of why I'm not more heavily involved in fandom than I am. I mean, I write the occasional fic, I read a fair amount of fic, I chat with people here and in email and on IRC about the shows and the fic, but I'm not really deeply into it. It's just the constant rehashes of the same old arguments and the same old grievances, over and over. A lot of people say it pisses them off; jennyo seems to be fairly up-in-arms about it herself, although in a very entertaining and completely justified way. Me, I just find it makes me tired. Makes me want to shrug and say "dude, whatEVER" and go read some profic.

I guess I am a bitter old fic queen, but not exactly in the sense that jennyo means it. I'm bitter, I'm old, and I write fic. That's about it. *g*