Rediscovery

SO, finally I am getting to where I can start writing more about what I had originally intended with this blog. When I first started, it wasn't actually my intention to post generic life updates and photos, so much as it was to post something of an online journal along the lines of the kind of journaling that used to be so central to my life.

Well, I recently rediscovered many of those old journals. See, for the past five years -- since I've been in my house -- my books and journals and many of my personal space things have been tucked away in storage (my actual apartment in the house is rather small and we just didn't have space for it all). So, alas, in the shed, my milkcrates full of books became mouse tenaments, and my journals sat collecting dust in big rubbermaid tubs. But with the completion of our garage, and my office space in the upstairs, I have finally been able to unpack the annals of my life onto homemade bookshelves in a creative space that I call my own.

It was something of a reflective process -- unpacking, cleaning up and organizing books and journals and files going back to grammar school. How thankful I am that my family has helped to save so much stuff from my past! After finally getting things taken out and put away, I was able to sit back and take it all in -- the books and tapes and titles that tell of times from my past. The many books that show just how deeply into certain things I dove. And the journals... To be able to read and reconnect with my own memories so vividly!

I spent the past week rereading my journals from when I studied abroad in Russia in 1991. I cannot express just how awesome it is that I was so faithful to journaling back then so as to capture the experiences the way I did. These were truly life-changing experiences, a witness to history. And I was smart enough to write it down, describe the sights and sounds and smells and fears and emotions and joys of experencing something so foreign from what I knew. There is so much richness and raw truth in those words that I need to make them more accessible. They need to find their way into print for others to share.

So now that I have a space, my history before me, I embark on a journey to relive, rethink and redefine myself. Maybe this is a midlife crisis? Even if I am too young for that, this is a moment of reconnecting with myself. A transition point. A chance to recommit to being who I want to be, who I think I am. What I might become.