Flash Back
Even a shopping list is interesting once it’s a few years old. ~ Colleen talking to Josh about collage journaling.
Unedited Journal entry from January 3, 2003: The New Year doesn’t excite me, in the same way a birthday doesn’t anymore. It signals the passing of more time and a new number to get used to. I don’t blow noisemakers or make resolutions. 
I was thinking during my meditation this morning (not supposed to be thinking then, but it happens) about what direction I want to move in. I don’t tell stuff like that to other people because then they might try to push me in those directions. I don’t like to be pushed. I don’t like heroics. I can’t get enough of being alone lately. I’m distracted by the war that President Bush is determined to have in Iraq and all the other things his gang is up to. I still haven’t finished mourning the million civilians who died in the first Gulf War and because of the sanctions. This New Year is a challenging one. Jayn and I named the Museletter this month “Moon of Dissent, Year of Compassion.” Joe is in Florida on a retreat. Since he’s been gone we lost power one night, the phone broke, my alarm clock broke, my filing cabinet got stuck, and I hit Jayn’s van with my car and busted out her brake light. I had a date with Josh – saw the second “Lord of the Rings” and out to eat – and a date with Dylan for lunch and to return the gaudy CD player, silver robot high tech looking thing for a simple black one. I read my poem “Dream for President Bush” at the open mic. I loved the movie “Shipping News” and especially the line in it where the woman goes home to Newfoundland because “it’s like you’re a piece of a puzzle that you have to figure out.” That’s how I felt all year and last year, processing Jim and Dan’s deaths – my ties to Hull – seeing my place in the puzzle and trying to fill in those big empty spaces where Jim and Dan used to be. Now I’m quietly trying to lose the 2 pounds that I gained over the holidays. I want to start mediating twice a day instead of once, but that’s not a hard fast resolution. It’s an intent.
Post note: The journal entry continues: Joe and I got each other the same Christmas present this year (It’s not the first time this has happened). Even stranger was that Dylan handed them to us at the same time and we opened them together. Dylan didn’t know what they were (two green bathrobes, mine’s a little brighter), but I thought it was surely a set-up.
January 12th, 2007 10:27 am
This is odd or coincidental!!! I checked out my journal of last year and it reads: “Since the passing of my father I have been drinking more and I haven’t felt very good. I need something to make me feel alive again….oh yea we got Dad’s medical records and it shows all they did was fill him up with haldol” My journal this year doesn’t sound anything like that entry. A year does make a big difference.
January 12th, 2007 10:29 am
I’m sorry about you hitting your friends car. I hate little things like that though I know you shouldn’t worry about the small stuff. I do like the New Year for the reason I feel like it gives me a fresh start and cleanses my mistakes for the coming year. I know that sounds crazy…I believe God does that constantly but that the world only does it once a year! But I long for the day that I don’t have any mistakes to be ashamed of in a year. If somebody would completely quit drinking or stick to her 2 drink minimum plan she wouldn’t!!!
January 12th, 2007 2:16 pm
We all need time to just step back and BE. You are probably stoking up for a very creative writing spree.
January 12th, 2007 3:25 pm
How interesting to go back and re-visit and view that some things are so the same and many are so different. You can see directionality of your life.
January 12th, 2007 3:36 pm
I found a long letter I wrote to Maureen just before our first child was born, and the letter she wrote back. It was mostly business, oddly. Won’t be posting it. But its interesting to go back and we what you *wrote* at some point in time. Writing is like conscious and harder-to-do dreaming. Most of it, just as ephemeral.
January 12th, 2007 9:51 pm
You are very brave putting an unedited journal entry on line! Mine are way more random than yours, and definitely for my eyes only! I like the visual look of your journal. Michele sent me
January 13th, 2007 12:44 pm
What an interesting look back Colleen…Have you always kept a journal? Sometimes I wish I had, but I never did…It would be so interesting to look back at how things felt like 10 years ago or 20 or more…!
January 13th, 2007 3:08 pm
My journal is like my memory. I’ve kept them reguarly for the last 20 years. Lately (since blogging) my journals have devolved into compostion notebooks with notes full of scribble. The foster care I did for ten years required a lot of note taking. I saw how important a record can be for tracing things back.
January 14th, 2007 10:08 am
There is something so nostalgic about reading our thoughts and words from even a few years ago. One memory leads to another.. and another.
January 20th, 2007 5:35 pm
You guys are sexy and mentally sexy. Is it love or loving?
Seems you are the longest lasting couple of all my peers.
Funny to witness your young love and writing/activism lifestyle.
Congratulations on the accomplishments of your artist son. Very hip.
Seems like the shy guy can handle the spotlight and speakers floor.
It is a credit to good mothering and fathering you kept whole as possible. Funny when you have to write the book on living, while living, the book on raising, while you raise!