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Bloggy Blog #71

Tucked away inside a storage bin at my parent’s rented garage sits a thick red book. Its pages lined like graph paper, I used it as a writing journal for a good portion of the 2000’s. The entries begin in July 2003, at a Starbucks on the north shore of Long Island. They begin there as that is where my thirteen-hundred mile trek wound up, all the way from an Amtrak station in Little Rock, Arkansas a day and a half earlier. I chose the train because it was relatively cheaper than flying, and I had some time on my hands. It is a long trip, and one where you have to change trains at least twice. My first train switch occurred in Chicago. In the couple hours I had in between rides, an old friend stopped by Union Station to say hello and catch up in person. It had been awhile since we saw each other, mostly due to our geography. Not that distance made our friendship challenging, but she was probably never going to leave the midwest, and that was perfectly fine. Myself on the other hand, even today I’m unsure where I might belong.


The second train switch en route to my destination occurred at Penn Station in New York City. I believe this was just my second time ever in this massive place. Here I was a grown man with child-like intimidation at just how daunting Penn Station appeared. Years later, when I moved to New York City, I essentially had to get over my view of the place and figure it the hell out if I wanted any chance of going to most places, like back up to Albany. But this time, back in 2003,  I was almost scared, as I’m sure it is for many new to the city. I had absolutely no idea how to transfer from an Amtrak train to the Long Island Rail Road, so I managed to plead with my Long Island friend to meet me there and we could ride back together. In hindsight I’m sure she was annoyed at doing such, seeing how peak hours one way probably cost her about twelve bucks then. So she likely spent twenty-four just to come rescue my lame doe-eyed self.

  

My first entry into that red journal chronicled my trip up until that point. The deflated sense of self I experienced leaving a job I once thought I loved, combined with the slight anxiety of starting graduate school on eastern Long Island. It was a confusing transitional period, and maybe one I never fully embraced, much less properly planned for. Within a month upon that first journal entry, I found myself back home. There would be no grad school, and the distance inviting a strain on an already trying relationship with the one who saved me from the doldrums of Penn Station.
  
I think about this journal whenever I tend to get upset with myself. How I wish I could read it, maybe gain some perspective at how absolutely miserable I was back then. I could ask my folks to look for it, but I don’t wish for them to do such a boring chore for my sake. Plus, it might be best if they don’t snoop around and read some of the pages. It’s pretty unpleasant, with considerable rage aimed specifically at my family. Typical young angsty dialogue, and something they do not need to feast their eyes upon. Just as well, this journal was very much therapeutic for the one who composed in it. It helped ground me in troubling times. When I thought there was little or nothing left, I’d find a pen and flip the red book open to the next empty page.

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