January 1, 2014

Starting Somewhere

As a kid, I would go to visit my grandmother in the summers. Either my grandma had dreams of me becoming a writing prodigy or she just wanted a half hour to herself in the afternoons, because by the time I was four or five she gave me a journal. Every day of my visit I was required to write down what I was doing and my thoughts about various topics. I hated it.

Yet she persisted. If I came to visit and had "forgotten" the journal she gave me on my last trip, she would find  another for me. And so I would write, despite my indifference and/or hatred towards the exercise.

When I was ten, I found the first journal, the one she had given me when I was five. I spent the better part of an hour reading my childish writing and laughing at my abhorrent spelling. When the entries ended abruptly, assumedly at the end of my visit, I wished there was more. So I started writing again, but of my own volition this time. I wasn't always the most consistent writer, but I managed to keep up the practice of journaling until the beginning of my senior year of high school, when I turned my attention to other things.

If I am to believe what most people tell me, right now is the most exciting time in my life. I probably wouldn't call it that. It would be more accurate to call it the most stressful time in my life, so far. I'm in my third year of university, and my classes and extracurriculars keep me busy. But so what? Life doesn't get less busy from here. Next stop is medical school, and I don't doubt the general consensus on how that phase of life goes. Then who knows what? The point is, this phase of my life will be gone quickly. I don't want to forget the period in my life when I became my own person, found new hobbies, made lasting friendships, and all that jazz. I want to have at least a recollection of it. So this is that.


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