Alright, so here’s the thing.
(Pardon the ME! ME! ME! nature of this post.)
I’ve
been dutifully writing to a diary since I was 10. It started with being
told by my mother to keep a travel journal during our summer vacation
in 1999. This included trips to everywhere from Florida, to Europe, to Missouri.
Somewhere along the way, chronicling my experiences stopped being an
assignment & became… duty. A personal duty that I obligated myself to. At 10, I worried that somewhere between
Pensacola & Hamburg, I wouldn’t write down a moment & it would
be lost forever. I’d never remember to tell my grandchildren about the
doll in the window that I fell in love with in a Belgium town square. I
would forget about the time that we visited the Arch & it was so windy, I thought it would blow over. & so I wrote. Maybe out of self-induced guilt. But the diary from that summer is a great read, nonetheless.
For
awhile in high school, I was able to maintain an actual written diary
that lived under my mattress while I also kept up with the trend that
was sweeping the halls at school – Xanga. The actual diary held all of
my secrets – Abundant boy troubles, drama with friends (& “friends)
& frustration with parents or teachers. A typical teenage girl’s
end-of-the-world problems. It also held my poetry, love notes to a
future husband, verses & sketches. My soul. Xanga started fading
amongst friends, but I kept writing under my anonymous pen names,
eventually moving to LiveJournal as I started college.
When
college began, I tried to make an effort to write in my real diary once
a month. It didn’t last long. Between homework assignments, new friends
& a new long distance boyfriend with whom I spent all of my free
time talking to on the phone, LiveJournal became my outlet. I vented, I
waxed poetic. Stream of conscience entries written to an invisible, online
audience was the therapy that got me through college.
I’ve forged a long cyber path of my thoughts over the last 10 years.
When I began discovering blogs & blog communities, I was obsessed. I
think DesignSponge & Oh Joy! were my first doses of what a blog
could really be. As such, I moved into the design focused realm of the
blogging internet, which helped shape (& justify) my then-recent
shift to an event planning major. I started a pathetic attempt at a
wedding blog, because OnceWed took over my life as I looked forward to
getting engaged & started coordinating weddings on the side. It’s
really embarrassing. In fact, I think I deleted all of it ;)
Sitting
in Our Tree started budding in my mind the summer before we got
married. The guilt of not writing in a diary kept me up some nights,
especially as we planned our wedding. But the stress of a new job on top
of planning a wedding had kept me from doing much of ANYTHING. I, like
everybody else, discovered Cup of Joe, Rockstar Diaries & The
Daybook blogs (along with many more than I care to admit to) & dove headfirst into the PERSONAL blog realm. How lovely
– Somewhere to document our life as a married couple! & so Sitting
in Our Tree was born. An effort to document our lives, for us to look
back on & remember some of those little memories. Bottling up conversations & adventures & sealing them tight.
It’s
been weird writing here, though. It’s difficult to find a voice that’s
approachable, easy-to-read & non-controversial. I’ve ended up
censoring myself because of a fear of personal circles conflicting with a
public blog. It’s easier to present the nice & shiny - To throw up
some pictures, write four sentences & call it a day.
But
the truth is – I’m an awkward, sarcastic, wordy person. I talk a lot
& write even more. (As demonstrated by my 800+ words on this post
alone.) & that’s just the way I've always been. (My older sister’s travel
journal from Summer ’99 involved sentences like, “We took a carriage
ride through the misty English countryside, drawn by a beautiful, dappled horse named Dill.” My experience was more like, “We were STARVING
& it seemed like sitting in a box pulled by a horse was only making
me hungrier for another apricot pastry like we’d had on the
train.”) I've only just realized that THIS is my corner to write, rather than post my broody, dramatic pictures, or 140 characters worth of absolute Kelsey nonsense.
This post was more for me than it was for you, I suppose. It's just time for reflection & changes, you know?
