what is it about writing in a journal that just feels so good? and i don't mean xanga or myspace or any other web blog. i mean a physical journal...where you can smell the paper, feel the ink transferring from your pen to record your thoughts, feel your hand cramp up from writing a 20 page entry (hee hee)... i used to write in journals just about everyday. from middle school until early college. and then i felt life became too busy and until this week, i have not touched my journals (except for a 3 week snippet while i was in hong kong) for about five years. i was just home for about a week and a half for christmas to see my family. i moved away more than 1.5 years ago and have gone home numerous times. it is only this past trip home that i was ready to "clean" out my room. my sister and i took a trip to salvation army and we had her trunk and her back seat filled with things to give away (she is moving to LA also this week). i gave away stuffed animals that i have had since i was a child, books that i used to reread and reread over and over again. i recycled all the magazines i have collected. and then i found my journals. it was saturday night. i had a 9am flight the next morning and had to wake up at 6. still i sat there until 3am reading old entries, remembering the days i used to bare my soul to something other than my own unspoken thoughts. i read about old crushes, inconsequential drama, future hopes and wishes...i felt myself re-living those days and missing old friends. life somehow seems more complicated now even though i felt it was complicated enough back then. life never becomes simple does it? i read through two journals spanning from late high school to early college. i would like to think i have changed now, that if i were presented with the same situations i would react differently. but honestly, i'm not sure. a lot of my journals had to do with my hopes related to being a hopeless romantic. i think i still would have made those same choices. one thing that is different is the relationship between my sister and i. although we have always loved each other and been there for each other, i think our bond grew stronger after i went off to college and moved away. i guess absence really does make the heart grow fonder. that and we didn't have to fight over who got to pick the channel on the tv or used the computer  so, in returning to seattle, i have started the new year with my return to journal writing. here's to reading it in another 10 years and remembering the good, the bad, and the amazing times of my life  | 
