For the past few weeks, I have been remodeling my room. It’s been quite a process of moving furniture, cleaning out some old clothes, and dusting all the neglected corners. In the midst of all this, I came across the stack of my old journals. On the Home page of my blog, I mention that I have been journaling from the time I was about eleven years old. I have kept all of my journals since then, and when I rediscovered them, I found myself reading through the past ten years of my life. As I went through them, I wished that I could have gone back in time to tell myself what I know now. If that were possible, I think we can all agree that life would be so much easier.
But alas, life does not come with an instruction manual. We must learn lessons the hard way more often times than not. Of course there are mentors and people who will guide us along the way, but for the most part when I was fourteen years old, it felt like it was me against the world. I felt like I knew everything and nothing all at once. I barely knew myself, yet I was expected to learn everything about the world. Especially nowadays, I see that career building has begun to creep into the younger population, as young as the third or fourth grade. This push to rapidly build a skill set and choose a career path at such a young age can lead to a loss of sense of self which will inevitably lead to a premature midlife identity crisis. This is certainly a flaw in American society, and it is sad that there is not much time for personal reflection for the youth of today, but I digress.
For a long time now, I have been writing in the first person, and I want to try to change it up. (To be honest, it can get boring, and it can sometimes make me too self-centered!) I will be starting a series called “Dear Annie” in which I will publish an excerpt from my journals from the past and then respond to them in real time in the form of a letter to my past self. Not only will this allow me to build from the lessons I have learned so far in my life, but I hope that the series can serve as a guiding light to anyone who is feeling a little bit lost, from any walk of life. I believe that we can all learn so much from each other, and even though we can’t change the past, each of us holds the power within ourselves to rule our own futures.
I am excited to begin this personal reflection journey, and I hope you will join me in daring to answer life’s deeper questions in order to build ourselves from the ground up!
Not Really A Writer 