Keyboard by Jim Frech of Galesburg, KS courtesy stockXchng

I have made a promise to myself that I will work on my book five days of the week. Not necessarily the week days or the equivalent hours to a five-workday week, but just in order to keep proceeding to that goal. As it is with all the writing I’ve done for pay, there is so much more work involved than just sitting down and writing what comes out of your head. I’ve started researching my own past, which so far has proven a bit … unsettling.

Last night I found my journal from college and started combing through it. Absorbing myself in the thoughts of myself twenty-five years ago (yes, that’s how old I am, folks) has brought back all kinds of emotions. It’s my own little brand of exposure therapy, I suppose. I definitely feel like Harry Potter in the Pensieve, or rather, more like Dumbledore must have felt in the Pensieve, watching his younger self. I want to soothe and comfort my younger self, and tell her that so many of these things won’t matter over time, but then I realize that’s not what I really want to do, and if I could, my younger self wouldn’t understand anyway.

Even when I acted like a complete fool, pondered drunkenness or suicide, and whooped for joy over the silliest little things, I still wouldn’t change the past, because it’s mine. All of it, even the bad bits. And I’m proud that I can look it all right in the eye.