Fire and Ice

Last night I read the funniest and most cringe-worthy thing I have EVER read. Unfortunately it’s not for sale so you can’t read it, it’s a sort of one-off. A manuscript, even. It was one of my earliest journals, covering 1986-87, the years when I was in 9 th grade and then graduated onto High School. So pretty formative couple of years, really. I’ve been doing some sorting out and found a whole lot of fascinating memorabilia (of which I should write in my blog later, really) but this journal probably was the best thing. I flicked through it before going to bed and was laughing and embarrassed all at the same time – it was like watching The Office. It’s amazing the amount of detail I put into this thing. I wrote nearly every day and recorded pretty much every single thing I did, what my friends did and even what scores I got on exams. It was like looking at my past, and I remembered people that were so important to me then but I didn’t even remember. I was surprised to read...

I haven't done much scrapbooking lately. I think that it's a combination of having too much on, not enough inspiration and, quite frankly, that I've been spending my time on other things (like running and messing around on Facebook). But I have been writing on my journal, which I hadn't really done in a good loooong time. I often wonder if it's worth still keeping a journal when almost everything I do these days is documented in blogs, in scrapbook layouts and even in emails. If scrapbooking is about leaving a legacy, then I definitely have that covered! I like to believe that in some distant future someone will sit down and read all my journals and albums and be able to put together a great portrait of what I was like, what my life was like and what I was all about. So yes, sometimes I think it's time to ditch the journal and move on to all the other media I have embraced. But then I take out the book, the pen and something happens... I open my soul to a blank...

How did I start scrapbooking? Well, the story of that is really the story of my journals... I’ve kept a journal ever since I was in fourth grade – it started out as an exercise for English class. The teacher wanted us to write something, anything, every day but of course she would check it so it would need to be something not too personal. I soon forgot that and wrote about my life, my day, my hopes and my dreams. But I didn’t just write with blue pen on a plain journal: oh no! I used all the colors of the rainbow to write and covered my journal in fabric swatches, which I then covered in clear plastic for protection. I really enjoyed the process so I kept going and when I completed one journal I would carry on with another. I wrote nearly every day, pages and pages, using all the colors I could lay my hands on and decorated the margins with a rainbow of doodling. Fast forward a few years and now I’m in College. I’m still keeping my journal but not writing every day but still using all...