Writing.

My white diary with the lock and the purple hearts all over it is filled with my sixth and seventh grade self. 

In eighth grade, our English teacher had us keep a journal that we would turn in each week, my private thoughts intermingle with her notes. 

That spiral bound notebook gave way to a deep purple diary with KEEP OUT written on it in black graffiti scrawl when I turned thirteen.  That one took me right through the angst of high school.  I always promised myself that I would write more often, much like I do here. 

Then, I moved to Belgium for two months and filled every inch of space in an entire journal, recording every minute detail.  I wrote for hours a day.  Hours.  There are notes scribbled when I was in class, on a train to the North Sea, and holed up in my bedroom there. 

The flower covered journal of my twenties is by far the one that I’ll keep hidden from my children.  Though after ten other boys, there in my own writing, I talk about meeting their father. 

In my late twenties, there were no journals, just a hundred or so emails and chats that I have saved.  That, and the half finished novel.  Of course.

I think of this blog when I tell people what I do.  I tell them that staying home with my children gave way to the writing.  The blogging.  In my head, writing is something I stumbled upon.  Something I started so much later in life, after my ‘real’ career ended.

But I suppose really, it’s been there all along.