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Book One, Game of Telephone

ginnabeans

Updated: Jul 3, 2023

"Book One is gone. I threw it away sometime between 2011 and 2014. That thick green notebook was taking up space. I opened it up and read a few pages. The recognition of who I used to be was too ... what?"


I can't tell you much about Book One because I destroyed it. Here's what I know...


I started journaling on Thanksgiving Day in 1996, which Google tells me fell on November 28.


Book One was a green spiral notebook and I had collaged the front of it. I was in a collaging phase. It was a long phase. In addition to morning pages, Book One contained all the writing exercises provided by Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I did all of them (a better student to an invisible Ms. Cameron than I was to any of my actual teachers in my actual education.) The only exercise I can remember though is a sketch she suggested we draw of our critic(s.) Think of a time you were put down or shut down ... that kind of thing. I drew the faces of two classmates in my undergrad actor training class. It was meant to represent the time I could see them whispering in the front row when I had to sing in front of the class. I was horrible, of course. They made it worse.



Book One and its cover are gone, but here are some other collages I made during that (long) phase.



I threw Book One away sometime between 2011 and 2014. That thick green notebook was taking up space. I opened it up and read a few pages. The recognition of who I used to be was too ... what?


Uncomfortable.

Embarrassing.

True.


So I tossed it. I haven't missed it, which affirms my choice to get rid of them all. But Book One didn't get a read-through like the rest of them will. In fact, I have already read the first eleven books. The first eleven took over a year to read. Not because of quantity but rather because I hated reading them. Hated acquainting myself with younger me. I hated her honesty, her vulnerability, her hopefulness, her insecurities. Y'all it is excruciating. But if she couldn't put that stuff in her journals, where else would it go? She certainly didn't want to tell you. She was trying to lead you all to believe that she was fearless.


I am not going to deceive you like that.


Keep in mind, this blog is a game of telephone. A twenty-three-year-old whispers a word into a book in 1997. The book whispers it to me across two and a half decades. I whisper it to you today, digitally. Do you think you are hearing the original word?


Come one back for Book Two. The setting is Columbus, Ohio. 1997...


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northernlifeyoga
Jul 04, 2023

Beautiful truth 💯 ❤️ The cover of a journal protects our inner most thoughts much like smiles and expressions covering our true feelings and vulnerabilities. - Allie

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