Way Prep - Old Swag

Author

Martin Nerurkar
February 24, 2020

Hey! Welcome to no 1 of this weird travel log / newsletter thing.

I'm not yet on the road but I wanted to send out a first letter anyway. A sort of test firing. Rattling the tubes to make sure the signal is going through and such. Also if you've followed my twitter or facebook you might have noticed a lot of teen archeology stuff popping up.

I'm preparing to dissolve my apartment, and that means moving a lot of stuff and getting rid of the rest. And since I'm officially moving back in with my parents (read as: dump my stuff there) while I travel I needed to make some room there. So I recently spent an entire weekend going through my old room at my parents' house, uncovering a lot of old posessions, and eventually dumping most of them.

Dumping was actually surprisingly easy. Maybe because I had watched Marie Kondo in preparation or because most of that stuff was hidden away for a decade at least so it already felt pretty distant.

A very nostalgia-heavy excavation, to be sure. But there was a few gems to be had, so let me take you on this little trip to the 90s and early 2000s.

Let's start here, with the bigesst batch: A snapshot of some of my old clothes. This may also get you used to the selfies soon to come.

I loved this cardigan thing. It was nice and dark and pragmatic with the zipper. But man, the slightest friction and it's a static nightmare. There was a large block of time where everything I wore was either black, dark olive or dark blue. Nothing bright or colorful, just don't draw any attention.  

What is this? Horizontal stripes? I'm already wide enough as is. And then it's a thin wool thing but with this terrible hood that barely fits on my head? I hope it wasn't me who bought that.

Ah. This one's not so bad. I almost kept it. A reminder of my attempts at being a tad more emo. I guess I was a tad too early. I always flirted with the idea of the goth community but never felt like I would belong there, so I ended up somewhere in the nondescript metal middle. The black nails at least were my little tribute. At least I have the piercings and colored hair now. Gotta make those childhood/teenage dreams come true!

And another one of my staples. I wore this thing a lot. And surprisingly, it still fit. In fact like a lot of my clothes it was surprisingly large. With arms hanging down my hands woudn't even peak out. I'm not sure if that was the fashion back then or if I just preferred to hide under too much fabric. Probably a little bit of both. We've come a long way, haven't we?

And as a final gift to you, this thing: CYBER GAME PARTY. I assume my dad brought it from some asian trip? Man, I don't even know. This weird mixture of words, a semi-asian font and what look to be celtic knots. Incredible. A designers desperate attempt at rebellion or the results of some proto shirt algorithm? We'll never know!

But even beyond the clothes there was a lot more weirdness to uncover: Copying pin up art out of old comic books, critical notes from my elementary school teacher bemoaning my terrible handwriting and old love letters. And of course a lot of Pen and Paper RPG and sci-fi/fantasy books. Looking at my choice in entertainment probably tells you a lot about my earlier years.

Contrary to the terrible clothes, a lot of that entertainment stuff is still ar ound and looking for a better home. If you're interested in the inventory or if you're just curious about my questionable taste in early 2000s fantasy artists, you can find a google sheet with all the stuff here:

Don't shame me! I'm sure there's some equally cringy skeletons in your closet :)

Thanks for listening! See you in the next one!

- Martin

Oh, and one last thing! This printout from the BIZ - Berufsinformationszentrum. This was a test we did in school at the work-ministry-thing. It's goal was to categorize your interests and give you a bunch of job suggestions. This is the page with the different vague interests.

What do you think, how did I do?