Lost

I have always loved writing. For me, it has always been a way to process my thoughts – sound them out so I really understand how I feel about something. That’s why I started this blog. But before the days of blogging, I wrote the old fashioned way – on paper.

When I was in middle school, while everyone else was listening to my science teacher lecture on about a George Orwell futuristic society where people wouldn’t carry cash – they would have their money deposited directly into an account and they would use these cards to buy things and machines would subtract the money they would spend. Wait, it gets better. To communicate, people would carry these wireless things that they would talk into, just like in Star Trek. I know, the man was a genius! Anyway, instead of listening to those predictions day in and day out, I was the girl who sat in the back of the room writing poetry about it all. I will spare you the sharing of this attempted poetry because I wanted to share with you something I wrote last year, or perhaps the year before, that I thought was quite good. It truly captured how I was feeling at the time – and how I feel every year at this time. A perfect post describing the melancholy of May, the bittersweet of the endings and the beginnings, the nostalgia and the hope… All summed up in several pages jotted down in my journal in the days before the blog.

But I can’t find the notebook. It is lost. Pages full of my thoughts from To Do lists, to questions to ask the Doctor, to my menu plan for the week, to phone numbers and messages hurriedly scribbled in random spots. My worries, my goals, my future blog posts… Gone.

I can’t imagine where I might have left it. I used to carry it with me everywhere but for awhile it just sat on my desk because I don’t have a lot of time to write down every little sound-bite from my brain and what I do write, I keep on the laptop. But the other day, I had it with me because I knew I would have time to write but I didn’t want to be responsible for the computer since I have a habit of losing things. Ahem. Anyway, the only thing I can think is that wherever I was, is where I left the journal.

And today it struck me that if I left it in a public place, someone has probably picked it up and read it. Initially, I was horrified. Not that a total stranger would care what I had planned to make for dinner on some Tuesday in April of last year or what I needed to pick up at CVS, or how much Logan weighed at his last well child check – but those notes are mine! I feel so violated at just the mere thought of some stranger knowing my innermost thoughts and personal routines. Are you snickering yet? Imagine being worried about some face-less somebody reading words that I had hoped to upload onto my internet blog!

I feel the same way I did a few years ago when I met my aunt at a local restaurant for lunch and I brought my most recent photos of Dean, a toddler at the time. The pictures were all perfectly chronologically organized in a photo album – an album that I left at the restaurant (I think) never to be seen again. That’s right - pictures of my precious baby handled by some stranger and probably carelessly dumped into the garbage can. Of course, I was able to buy a new photo album and get the pictures redeveloped, but still.

In this case, I probably can‘t rewrite that piece about May, a bit of writing that was as true when I wrote it as it is right now this minute. And that is what I truly feel I have lost here. With many of my posts, I have felt that I did not quite convey what I was truly thinking and feeling. With a few, I was almost there, but fell short. This, I guess, is a skill that comes with time and you (1blueshi1) have been quite encouraging. “Keep on, keeping on,” you said and that I’ll be grateful that I do. I hope you are right. And if there are any other faithful lurkers out there, this is a great time to de-cloak yourself and let me know you have been reading. I could really use the encouragement right about now.