Attempts

I am miserable at keeping a journal. I will get urges to start journaling again, I will go out and buy one, marvel at its potential and all the possibilities of what it may one day contain, write a couple entries, get distracted, try to go back to it before I usually forget about it and wait for the next urge to come around. I was going through some shelves in my room at home, trying to see if there was anything I could get rid of. It was full of these sparse journals, mainly extremely dramatic entries about the current love of my life and how I just don’t know what I will do if I the feelings aren’t reciprocal, or utterly boring pages about the current monotony of life that wouldn’t find interest with even the most lonely person in search of connection. I cringe and wince in the back pages of these journals and notebooks, which are inevitably filled with extremely elaborate, hideous doodles I obviously put way too much effort into during a sermon or late at night, and my name written an infinite number of times in experimental styles and with a variety of last names (usually in the same ink as the entries about the most current unrequited love.)

I wasn’t able to throw any of these out. Granted, I would be mortified if anyone were to open those and heaven-forbid actually see whose last names I tested in my signature or what kind of absurdity I had found so vital and life-changing at any given moment.At the same time, however, I loved by able to see how much I have changed and yet still stayed the same. I still have crushes that become all-consuming and seem like they can be life-or-death situations, although I am learning to not worry about what the future holds in those situations and focus more on today. No one ever passed along the memo that once you reach a certain point, doodling is not as acceptable during class, so my notebooks are all still filled with ridiculous ink drawings and repeated versions of my signature. I have started only taking my computer to class, because that is the only way I have figured out to keep myself from doodling (although the urge sometimes becomes too great I’ll pull out a gum wrapper or receipt scrap from my backpack and pretend to be writing something memorable down, when in reality it’s usually a rendering of a Tri-Delt tshirt I have suddenly envisioned or series of “N”s, “P”s and “L” in various shape and arrangement. What can I say? I’m a serial doodler).