Time To Lace Up My Shoes

I am sitting here, slowly sipping a latte and munching a delicious muffin from Cherry Bomb Coffee. I don't have anything profound or interesting to say... or if I do, it's not quite coming out. Things are going well, yet at the same time they aren't. Things are not good, yet at the same time they are. Is it always so? I have been receiving a mix of good and bad news recently, and there are moments when I can no longer make sense of anything. It would seem that, overall, everything is heading in the right direction. But up close, it's one step forward, two steps back.

It's about wanting to talk about the good things and the hopeful dreams and dreamy hopes, yet at the same time not wanting to jinx them. And about wanting to share the bad things, the disappointments and sad bits, yet at the same time wanting to forget about them.

I've been casting glances at my old journal, for months now. I always see it, and even if it's not in my range of vision, I know it's there, and I feel its pull. But when I open it and take a pen in my hand, my mind goes blank. I'm slowly realizing why that might be - and I pray that this is the reason indeed, or otherwise it simply means that I just cannot write anymore.
My journal. It's a thick, very thick, graph paper notebook in a plaid-patterned hard cover. The first entry dates to December many years ago... December 2000. Three years later, the entries get very - and I mean very - sparse. There is only one for all of 2004. Things pick up a bit in 2005 and 2006, but never quite recover.

Earlier this year, I tried an experiment with a calendar-type journal, in which one day had only one page. It was an attempt at combating the apparent issue of lack of time. Filling in one page per day would only take a few minutes. But this approach did not quite work. Some days, I did not feel like writing. Other days, I wanted to write pages and pages.
Thus, in April, I went back to the old notebook. In one of the entries, I hit the nail on the head and finally admitted to myself why I was having trouble writing. In a nutshell, I was not willing to write about the thing which truly need to be written down, and let out, released. The end result were dry, shallow entries. That's not what a journal is about.

Although I am still not quite ready to write about many things, I have made some progress. I will write about them. But first, I need to resolve a few others, bring a conclusion to a number of situations and issues.

The first page of my old notebook contains an anonymous quote. At the time, it was the perfect phrase to put at the start of a new volume of my diary. I have filled many journals in the past, and I had never expected this one to still have plenty of space left nearly 7 years later. The opening line has long since ceased to apply - to my life, and to me as a person.

Yet if I was to retire this journal and start a new one today, it would feel like running away and leaving things unfinished. Moreover, the overall situation would not change: I'd still struggle with putting some things in writing.

Soon, I will write again. In a new book. But first, I need to tie up the loose ends.