Comma Dot Comma

Tara’s wonderful blog post earlier this summer with excerpts from her childhood journal sent me in search of my own journals. I wondered if perhaps I, too, was a charming and precocious child. It turns out I didn’t keep journals much–the only one I could find is from seventh grade. Distinctly not charming. In fact, it is as excruciating and awkward as I myself was at that age.

A significant portion is devoted to imagining how everyone I know would react if a) I suddenly died b) I ran away (the town is “monotonous and cruel”) or c) they read the journal. I was sure that one schoolmate would come away from reading it with an awareness of “how shallow she is.” I did not spend any time wondering how my older self would respond. Clearly I had too much trust in future me, who has no compunction about outing past me on the internets.

But some of it still caught my eye. A little meditation on how it feels to stand at the plate in a ball game, scraping dust off one toe with the other, and try to remember everything your coach told you. A dissection of why I prefer to be angry than happy (it’s more interesting!), and a side note on how God communicates. I’m glad I did sometimes duck out of the maelstrom of the age and take note.

Last year I spent much of the brain-sizzling Phoenix summer indoors and feeling ill. I vowed not to pass the next summer in such a cabin-fevered fashion! Now I feel as if I perhaps over corrected. It’s a relief to be home with no travel on the horizon for a few months.

Places other than my home in or near which I have slept this summer:

Pismo Beach, CA
Long Beach, CA

Payson, AZ

Euguene, OR
Coos Bay, OR
Florence, OR
McMinnville, OR
Tillamook, OR
Portland, OR

Tucson, AZ

Austin, TX

Boston, MA
Waltham, MA
Provincetown, MA