<< morgue | next >>


peak:

I'm back to the journal and it's now a year old. Who would have thought?


valley:

I've been a tennis playing fool up until the past couple of days... I've gotta drag my ass back outside again.


noise:

A whole bunch of MP3s


sustenance:

Pringles.


thoughts:

What direction am I gonna take this journal? And when am I going to get a hair cut?


[ i n - t e r - i m ]

saturday, june 2nd


home  |  bio  |  masthead  |  quotes  |  morgue  |  speak up  |  livejournal


Quote Du Jour:
"Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit."
(Dr. M. Scott Peck)

One hundred and ninety-five.
Or is it one hundred and ninety five?
I can never remember whether a big number like that needs a hyphen.

Regardless, 195 is the number of entries I've written before this one today. And this entry is sort of special. It marks the one year anniversary of my online journal -- and, to me, that's one hell of a milestone.

Before I started this journal, my record for writing regularly was about three months. Maybe its my newspaper background, but I enjoy writing for an audience a lot more than I enjoy writing for myself. Writing for you guys has been much more fun than writing in some notebook and stuffing it under my bed could ever be. I only hope that I can continue to write as often as necessary to keep the site alive... And I hope that you guys keep stopping by to read what I have to say. I also hope that we'll all be able to meet back here a year from now to see how things have changed. I'm sure the changes that occur in the next 365 days will be as interesting as those that have occurred in the last 365 days.


On June 2, 2000, I was a ship at sea... on my side... trying to right myself. The spring 2000 semester brought love, passion, excitement, friendship, heartbreak and adversity together in one place. I guess my life had been fairly boring before... because the semester almost proved oto be too much to handle. I was drinking four or five times a week. I almost flunked out of school. I was building a new friendship (with Jonathan), renewing another (with Alex), dealing with love & heartache (with Lindsay) while struggling to fix a fourth relationship (with Jessie). In one moment, I was on top of the world... and in the next, I plunged to the darkest depths of my soul. One or the other would have been okay... but taking the good with the bad (and vice versa) was tougher than I thought it would be.

I came home for the summer hungover and nasty-looking. In fact, I can remember that I was wearing a worn-out Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt and some shorts. My hair was nappy and I needed a shower. Of course, those problems were easy to fix with a shower. But I started working on the bigger problems, too. I stopped drinking. I put distance between me and my life at school -- which included Lindsay. Like an addict slowly purging the drugs from his system... I slowly got rid of what felt like a huge cloud that had been hovering above for months. I would be happy and cheerful for stretch of time only to slip backwards into heavy funks. But the stretches of happiness did get longer...

Comparing then with now...
I've never regressed back into the drinking of Spring 2000.
I've felt happier than I have ever have before.
I've got some sort of plan worked out for my life.
I've gone from being a fire photographer to being a firefighter.
I'm a year closer to having a bachelor's degree.
I've practically put my experiences with Lindsay behind me.
I'm still trying to figure out my relationship with Alex.
I'm still trying to figure out my relationship with Jessie.
And I have a new outlet for my thoughts.

Most of those things are products of this journal. How cool is it that so much can change for the better just because I sat down one night to write about how I felt. Of course, I can't take all of the credit. A lot of it goes to a girl named Melissa who writes a journal of her own. Before I stumbled across her site last spring, I never knew people kept online journals... and I'm sure I never imagined that I would ever write one... let alone be celebrating it's first birthday.

copyright © 2001-02, Thomas Fletcher. all rights reserved.