2016
The old urge to write burrowing up, lying in bed with insomnia, resisting as best I could, but that nagging feeling when conscious thought just won't quit. It's been almost 5 years since that last entry. A perfectly well summarized sign off from the world of public journaling. So, why now, when I've kept a private journal for years and that's sufficed? A few months ago, I was reading this David Mitchell novel where time marches forward with each chapter and the characters age from adolescence to near death by the end. I started to feel incredibly sad during the reading process and I think it was something about the inevitability of time, the way change and maturation and eventually death just happens regardless of anyone's wishes. I've always been obsessed with documentations of aging and the physical aspects of these natural transformations. I always want to see all the pictures, watch the age progressions, marvel over changing features and body shapes, forever clicking on links to the Where Are They Now posts for former child stars. Maybe that's the draw to this journal, again and again. To see 15 years of maturation, muscling through the cringeworthy aspects of the adolescent voice in order to make sense of myself. To continue to try to wrap my head around the fact that I am having a life.
I'm thirty now and the heavy symbolism and expectation attached to this chronological year has mostly not bothered me, but possibly that's because externally, I am typical for this age. I am married, employed, moving closer to professional goals (just submitted my hours for licensure, small private practice, recent new job offer), accepting of the complications of my family while maintaining amiable ties, in relatively good health but more conscious of the slowing metabolism and back pains, still hopelessly in debt (grad school's a doozy), making car payments and rent payments and cursing people my age who buy houses in the Bay Area out of my own jealousy, generally less social due to dwindling long term friends in the area but very actively invested in coworker friends and cultivating couple friends, more committed in my spiritual practices, and contemplating getting a dog eventually since the urge to expand is ever present but childrearing is not currently on the table.
Maybe this need to write comes from places of transition. Constant themes of wanting to leave and wanting to stay (relationally, geographically, professionally) and with those turning points, a desire to take stock. I'm about to leave the job I've been at for the last two years and the clients are heavy on my mind, invading my dreams and amping the cortisol levels flooding my system. Writing has always been a purge. Maybe there are no neat endings that I can walk away from. No "no doubt, as usual, I exaggerated everything." Maybe I will keep reopening the book and making new chapters, regardless of their messiness. In fact, I hope I do.
I'm thirty now and the heavy symbolism and expectation attached to this chronological year has mostly not bothered me, but possibly that's because externally, I am typical for this age. I am married, employed, moving closer to professional goals (just submitted my hours for licensure, small private practice, recent new job offer), accepting of the complications of my family while maintaining amiable ties, in relatively good health but more conscious of the slowing metabolism and back pains, still hopelessly in debt (grad school's a doozy), making car payments and rent payments and cursing people my age who buy houses in the Bay Area out of my own jealousy, generally less social due to dwindling long term friends in the area but very actively invested in coworker friends and cultivating couple friends, more committed in my spiritual practices, and contemplating getting a dog eventually since the urge to expand is ever present but childrearing is not currently on the table.
Maybe this need to write comes from places of transition. Constant themes of wanting to leave and wanting to stay (relationally, geographically, professionally) and with those turning points, a desire to take stock. I'm about to leave the job I've been at for the last two years and the clients are heavy on my mind, invading my dreams and amping the cortisol levels flooding my system. Writing has always been a purge. Maybe there are no neat endings that I can walk away from. No "no doubt, as usual, I exaggerated everything." Maybe I will keep reopening the book and making new chapters, regardless of their messiness. In fact, I hope I do.