The Start is the Hardest Part.

I guess I consider myself to be a collector of journals. How could I not be? I still have journals I wrote when I was still learning to read (filled mostly with things like, "I learned how to spell Yugoslavia today. That's how it's spelled." and "Dad is really strict.") and I write in several journals to this day. I have my disease journal which hardly ever get updated and even when it is it's mostly, "Getting treatments every 6 weeks. Feel fine. No veins left. Mom still won't let me get a port. Blehhhh." Then there's my "art" journal which hasn't contained any art for several months. No photos, no poetry, no love. It's just there. Of course there's my main journal which is updated pretty frequently but censored to the point that sometimes I look back and wonder what the hell I was going on about. The past month of so of posts have been so extremely annoying to look back on, I almost want to delete them. Post after post of, "I hate my life." and then "Everything is so beautiful. I want to share it with you." It's restraining and uncomfortable. I've had that journal since I was 14 or 15 and sometimes I feel like it hasn't grown up with me and sometimes I feel like it's the only thing I've been able to keep.

Then there's this journal which will exist on it's own but also feature stuff from the physical journal I take everywhere. Jesse gave it to me for a Susanukkah present and I have used and abused the hell out of it. I was flipping and slipping through it this afternoon. The beginning is mostly poetry about the most mundane shit but I remember how I felt as I was writing it. There's photos as well as "tell so-and-so if I die..." stuff but I'm getting ahead of myself here.

I'm going to be selecting random things from my dearest journal, the physical representation of my soul over time, and posting it here. I find my biggest problem to be not knowing what I want and maybe by analyzing it here, I will. One can hope.

So, first thing? I painted in my journal for the first time last night. Faryn and I were smoking and she was making cards for her relatives and I was trying to figure what came next in the song I have been writing for the last eight years. Faryn finished and I decided to paint and for some reason, I decided to in my journal.

I am not a painter. I feel weird creating just about anything. I can't paint things, only patterns and shapes. If I know someone will see something I'm painting/drawing/whatever I get really uncomfortable and just fucking suck. However, since I was painting in my journal which I don't share with anyone, it was really freeing. I just painted what I felt and this is it:

It's not that great but I like it.