My Journal

In addition to this blog, I have also been keeping a personal journal in a black Moleskine notebook. I actually bought the notebook in 2012 I think, once I had convinced myself that I would accept any Peace Corps offer, were I to be accepted. However, I didn’t start writing in it until December 2013, when I left work and began traveling (really, I began “traveling” in September when I left my house in DC and lived a vagrant life, traveling to NY for work, but for all intents and purposes we can say that I started traveling when I stopped working, which also happens to be when I started journaling regularly).

I have very fond memories of December, January, and February with my journal. I traveled nice and light, just with a carry-on and my backpack, never with a computer (only my tablet), but I always had my journal in my backpack. Many an entry starts with, “I’m waiting for my flight now,” or “I’m currently flying from…”

And today, not even six months after my first entry, I have filled every page with my thoughts, feelings, wisdom, and Game of Thrones literary criticism. Luckily, I anticipated this, and I have two blank journals here with me ready to go, but it is still bittersweet and I have many a fond memory. In memoriam of my first journal, I would like to share some choice excerpts:

12/28/14 – “I’m in Philly now, waiting for my connection. More on Game of Thrones. Is the King’s son really Jaime’s son? Could be.”

2/4/14 – “O’Hare is all white and snowy. I have never seen it like this in all my time here last winter. It feels like they are made for this though. It is giving me confidence to make the connection.”

2/5/14 – “I was wrong. They closed the SFO gate 10 – 15 minutes before I got there.”

3/19/14 – “I think the malaria dreams have started.”

 

And if you love me and want to congratulate me for my vociferous writing and simultaneously further my wanderlust and materialistic dream of being a hip traveler of the world, destroying the environment one flight at a time, writing in style, you’ll get me this backpack.

When I first saw it at the Staples in Tysons Corner and thought the tag said $25 I fell in love, then I saw that there was an extra zero on the price and I had to forego my dream ever longer. But now its on sale at Amazon for only $172, and I just know that the next incarnation of my journal would fit ever so snugly inside.