I’ve owned and written in a journal since 1979, when one was given to me as a “gift.” I was eight years old. I wrote it in faithfully, logging away such memories as trips to Disneyland, water skiing with my family, and a faulty list of “All My Favorite Movies,” which somehow included Jaws II (which, even at the tender age of nine, I had registered in my mind as pure cinematic poo) and Saturday Night Fever (which I had never seen).
When I was 11 years old I was pained by my feeble attempt to capture the inner thoughts of a grade schooler, and I tore every last page of that journal out of the book – including the one where I had penned “A Current List of All My Girlfriends,” featuring 1) Marci Payne, whom I had loved from kindergarten through third grade, 2) “Christy,” who had been a senior camp counselor at Outdoor Education when I was in fourth grade, 3) Linda “Wonder Woman” Carter, the first woman who made me realize I had "feelings” for the opposite sex, and 4) Olivia Newton-John, of Grease, Xanadu, and “Let’s Get Physical” fame.
With the embarrassing pages torn out of my journal, I started anew. But the inner workings of a young man between the ages of 12 and 14 should in all honesty never find themselves transferred to the written word. More painful than any fiction, my journal entries that took place during my junior high school years would completely support any philosophy behind Book Burnings. Unless you are peculiarly interested in the exact date I started wearing deodorant, my fashion standing on Parachute Pants, or my constant wondering regarding when and if my voice would stop cracking – and why, for the love of heaven, it had to keep happening in front of the now popular cheerleader and old kindergarten flame, Marci Payne.
But I kept writing, despite my wondering if I would ever really want anyone to read any of it. Finally, at the beginning of this year (2005), I actually made a goal to write less in my journal. I felt fine about it for a while. Weeks went by and I thought, “See – nothing to really even write about.” Months went by…and I started to feel a little weird. And then, just recently really, I started to really miss writing. I love to write. I love stories. And so I'm hoping that by starting this blog I will take more opportunities to do it.
So check in from time to time. Of course if I don’t like what I’m writing, I’ll most likely rip it out and throw it away. Just like I did with my journal entry about the time I plotted to ask out the girl who sat in front of me in my Spanish I class, until an unfortunate incident involving bodily functions occured in class just three weeks before I turned 16. (Not all teenage boys belch on purpose, you know!) Que lastima!
