Twenty-Eight

I recently discovered a basket nearly filled to overflowing with my old journals. Looking back through them was enlightening, hilarious, painful. It was all the things life can be. Some entries were a mere recounting of events. Others were emotional explosions. Still others were secrets spilled into ink, things spoken aloud only once or twice even in all the years since they were penned.

The earliest entries I have are from January 1998, when I was eight years old. Now, twenty years later, on my 28th birthday, I begin again. For the last few years, journaling has been hit-and-miss, but not this year. This year, I will keep a chronicle of life. Five entries a week - regardless of their length - to capture my life. The mundane. The insane. The secrets. The joys and triumphs, the learning and failures.

There was one journal in my basket that stood out to me. It was one of the most thorough, completed start to finish, front and back sides of the pages, in exactly one year. In reading back through it, I was struck by my opening entry and my closing entries.

Below are excerpts from the end of each of those entries which helped inspire my goal for this year:

February 20, 2010

A journal keeps track of my progress for me and reminds me of my goals. A journal understands me. A journal is a part of me. Someday, when I am long gone, these pieces of me will remain. I am putting my 20 year old soul into these pages. Not for you or for those I love or for anyone. Just for me, because it is me. Read softly, carry a big heart.

February 20, 2011

Looking back at the beginning of this journal - one year ago today - it is easy to see all the change that can happen in 12 months time. Most of the questions that began the year I can now answer.

But the answers sometimes don't mean as much as the asking, and true connoisseurs of life have learned to appreciate the in-between.

There will always be more questions, more surprises, more answers, more reasons to laugh and love and cry.

There will not always be more minutes to ask, seek, love, cry or laugh. I think that is what people mean when they say to live in the moment.

Rather than living for the end of one journal or the beginning of another, live for each word that stitches together the events that make life. Some seams come apart, some are crooked, some will last a lifetime, but they're all necessary to make the quilt.

With that, I back stitch twice to secure the end of this particular line of stitches. Onto the next adventure.

Onto the next adventure indeed.