At a loss of things to write about today, I dug out some old journals and read through them in an attempt to find an entry that I could transcribe. One journal was from the second semester of my freshman year in college, and the other is one that I started the summer after I graduated college and... well... I still haven't finished. I haven't written in it in a year. Can you believe it? An entire year.

Anyway, I couldn't find one that I could comfortably transcribe. For one, my handwriting is atrocious at times. I guess when I'm scrawling emotionally I'm not really thinking about future me's ability to read it later. But for another, these entries are so depressive. The one from freshman year is full of self-doubt, self-loathing, and the desperate want to be appreciated by just one boy, any boy. And the post-college one.... well. Relationship issues left and right, hating my job, struggling with the city, food, my weight, my happiness or lack thereof.

I think it's especially striking to look at my 17-year-old self's thoughts. I knew I had insecurities then, and your typical collegiate angst, but revisiting it now eight years later, all I see is such sadness. Private, helpless sadness, and a yearning for self-actualization and peer acceptance. Seeing the words I wrote in the past somehow allowed me to gain more clarity on how and why things unfolded the way they did during the rest of my college years.

These past two months have been a strange escape from forward-moving life. I'm living in my childhood home, and the pace of my days has slowed almost to a crawl. I feel like I'm perpetually holding my breath, like this is just a hiccup in the momentum that my life has been taking. I've been feeling kind of down lately, like I'm not doing enough with myself, and like my lack of fruitful employment (10 hours a week is NOT enough) is indicative of my uselessness. But remembering how green I was then, how much I've grown and the obstacles I've tackled in order to get here, I feel more self-assured and that after this hiccup passes there will only be more forward movement.

And eight years from now, I'll look back on my blog and cherish the time that's passed since now as well.