Someone that I used to be

As a part of Project No-I-Swear-I'm-Going-To-Write-More-And-Not-Just-For-My-Dumb-Blog-That-No-One-Reads-Since-I-Moved-Back-To-America, I started rereading some of my old journals.  Actually, it had more to do with the fact that I finally cleaned out my closet today for the first time in years (ok, two years, but that still means years plural) and this was a massively self-indulgent/narcissistic way to procrastinate.

Journals, as a rule, are the worst possible place to gauge how good a writer is.  Not that you should be reading other people's journals.  But the fact that you shouldn't be reading it is the reason the writing is bad.  It's a place to practice how the word "fuck" sounds amidst your regular vernacular at age 14.  It's a space to write things like, "When I finish a book I get all sentimental.  Or philosophical.  Both, I think.  What's the difference?" (I kid you not, I wrote this on Jan. 21, 2006).

Immediately following that in my journal entry from January 2006 was, "Leslie* has a boyfriend from [a different school].  Leslie.  QUIET LESLIE has a freshman boyfriend.**  And I don't even have a cell phone."  Obviously I knew what was up in eighth grade.

I read something somewhere once where a writer was saying that keeping a journal is important, not because it improves your writing, but because it's a database of how you used to think at a certain age.  I've been sporadically filling pages since age 10, so I have--**moment because I'm old**--10 years of the evolution of my priorities recorded on paper in a box at the back of my closet.  Do you honestly remember what you cared about in fifth grade?  I was quite the little philosopher, with my rapidly curling hair.

April 30, 2003: "Well, I've learned so much! Not from school, but from being me."  Ten-year-old me then goes on to compare everyone in the universe to our cats at the time, Zippy and Zephy.  "Zephy is aware of everything.  Zippy on the other hand has lived up to her name and wouldn't know it if a shark was in front of her ready to bite out her brains.  I am a Zephy, obviously.  I am aware not of Ms. Avant's dull math lectures, but of the world.  I am this way and will stay this way."

Uh, yeah, that was me at age 10.  Guys, I was pretty damn spunky.  Why wasn't I the most popular kid at Hill City Elementary?  Oh probably because I was a pretentious fifth grader who spent all her time writing in her fuzzy red journal.

Also, I used to spell exact with a Z.  Now I edit my college newspaper.  Oh, how she's grown, lads.

 

*names have been changed to protect the innocent

**We were both in eighth grade at the time.  So this was, like, a big deal.