Burning the past

We are starting to go through things in the house just a little at a time, because we are hoping to move sometime in the Spring/Summer.

There is a box of mine that I decided to sort through. For years I kept a journal. I had them in a box and they traveled with me from place to place, being added to over the years. But I suddenly stopped writing down the things that were happening in my life sometime in 1999 or 2000.

I'm not exactly sure why, but I just stopped. I started up again, sort of, around 2004, but I didn't keep up with it.

I'm also not sure why I kept those ramblings for so many years. Some of them are hardbound books with lined pages filled with words, others were just cheap notepads I picked up in the office section of some store. They are so old that the pages are all separated, and some of them I numbered so they could be kept in order, and held with a rubber band.

Maybe a part of me thought they would be interesting to my kids someday, but since the two who were young when I wrote all of that stuff are grown now, and I'm not so sure they would find them interesting, I decided to get rid of them.

I started with whatever was on top, grazed through it quickly and tossed it into the fireplace. I think it was 1998 or 1999. Then I went to the next one, did the same thing. I got to the year 1995 and I read that one page by page as I tossed them into the fire. Interesting to me, not to anyone else, I decided. I went on a cruise that year. It was fun, but it only means something to me. I was pretty deep into a relationship that was part loyal great friendship/part cat-and-mouse love affair. The words were vivid, but I wouldn't say it was well written. I found it uninteresting and sad.

I have thumbed through at least five of them so far. Some years I was prolific, so there was more than one book for the same year, others were shorter.

Last night I read the last 20 or so pages of a book I've been devouring, "Love Child," by Allegra Houston. I usually take at least a month to read a book, but that one I read in two or three days. I had taken an unintentional nap earlier in the evening, so I wasn't really sleepy, and as I read the last word of the book,  I glanced at the clock. 1:30 a.m. I turned off the light, but I couldn't get settled. The journals, I thought. I should go through another one and try to work my way to the bottom of that box.

The one I pulled out was older. 1992. I started to read through it and decided I'm not ready to burn that one. It was filled with the usual 20-something angst and confusion, but it had some little tidbits about my children, and it was also written well. It was interesting, and I found myself still reading it an hour later.

My writing became bland and uninteresting the older I got. Maybe it was the circumstances. Maybe it was because I had to be a creative and interesting writer by day as a reporter in those later years, so by evening I was spent. Maybe it was because the people in my life at that time were sort of draining me. Or maybe it was because in those early years I was still at the university, and I was being challenged and inspired.

I'm inspired by lots of things: nature, music, art, books, I can find almost anything interesting. But I was surprised that my 1992 self inspired me. I really can write. I just haven't done it in a long time.