Pocket Pad [Journal Series]

These are pages from a little notepad that I kept in a pocket with a pen for whenever I thought of something to write about around the same time that I attempted that personal journal and began writing in my school journal. I did that because I kept thinking of things at the most inconvenient times and was getting frustrated by my inability to rekindle that inspiration again when I did have time to write. I happened to express that frustration to my guidance counsellor, and much to my surprise he pulled this pad out (it looked like he just happened to have one of these, not a whole drawer full or anything) and gave it to me to use.

From then on for months, no, probably a year at least, I kept that pad with me along with a trusty pen of some sort – usually an ordinary Bic because any time I bought myself a special pen, I usually lost it or I was too afraid to use it for fear of losing it (or in one case I couldn’t bring myself to use a pen for just everyday writing… maybe that’ll be a sidebar story sometime.)

Mostly, I used it to write down the screen names of AOL buddies as I was a new AOL user at the time and Buddy Lists had not yet been implemented. I also recorded directions to houses during many of my early road trips. On the inside cover, I recorded the phone numbers of everyone I knew at the time but without recording the names associated with those numbers. Not only did that save me a lot of space, but I didn’t want their numbers falling into the wrong hands should I lose the notepad. At the time I had no worries about remembering who went with what number as much as I was beginning to worry that I would soon begin to forget phone numbers. All my life I’d memorized the phone number of everyone I came to know, but as the list grew with age, I was beginning to slip up. Little used numbers were fading quickly. Stupid, yes, but what did I have to worry about back then?

Anyway, every once in a while the inspirations for which the notepad was originally intended did come along. I recorded this originally in this notepad while sitting in my bedroom.

The rest of the time, my inspirations usually came while sitting at the counter in Denny’s or, as in the last page, in a hotel/motel out in Kentucky or some such place during a road trip.

Enjoy.

I don’t have too much to say about these pages, really. You can see I was just as hung up on religion as I am now. The main difference I see is that I was still trying to figure things out then. Looking at it now, it looks more like I was trying to convince myself of what I was writing. It was difficult to shake the teachings of the church even though none of it had ever made any sense to me.