The Beginning

Over a decade ago I began a new journal with this entry:
    "Books like this are meant to be filled madly with the mystery, magic and poetry of a person's secret soul.  I never seem to be able to adequately fulfill this destiny for a new blank book, and once they are written in they are no longer the perfect vessels - unblemished and waiting eagerly.  The imagination can fill the pages so much better than the hand.  So I quote poetry and paste pictures and pretend that the book has been lived in for some time.  It's almost painful for me at first but then, after a while, I can go to it with sloppy penmanship while drowsy or ornery and the book is mine.  Every time I read back on a page it's like looking in on a sleeping child who does not know she is sleeping.  I can weep for or laugh at the person I was last week or a month ago because she's there, in black ink smeared slightly from the angle of the left hand writing.  And I suppose this is the point.  It isn't great literature.  It's being a witness to oneself.  There is no audience, regardless of who may read this.  I am the only audience."

This is my time machine, my method for talking to my future self.  Most days I don't feel that I have much to say, but when I look back at what I recorded years ago I'm so thankful for the effort I took to put myself down on paper.  Yes, that me can really be annoying!  She complains a lot.  But I get to see where I've made progress and where I'm still stuck, both of which are extremely helpful insights.  Why share this publicly?  I don't know....It seems that everything that has ever needed to be said has been said already, many times over.  But maybe my voice is the one that will resonate with someone when no other voices out there are able to reach him or her.  Maybe there's someone who needs to be reached.  We'll see.  I feel called to share and all I can do is answer that call, no matter how ridiculous I feel sending my private thoughts into the great void of the Internet.