Tag: books

The Evolution of a Voice: 34 Years of Journals in a Tote

A tabby cat sleeping on a green knitted blanket draped over a grey Rubbermaid tote, with a bookshelf and warm window light in the background.

​The heavy grey Rubbermaid tote that sits in the corner of my living room is covered with a green blanket. It has been the cat’s bed for the last nine years. Last week, I moved the blanket, slid the lid off, and stepped into the library of my life.

​The tote is full of my old journals.

​I sifted through, pulling out black hardcovers, brown leather-bound books, black-and-white composition books, and a few spiral-bound notebooks as well. Some pages were yellowed with time and fragile; others were stark white, as if time-proofed in some way. When I got to the bottom, I found the steno notebook with “#1” written in blue ballpoint pen on its aged cover.

​The first entry is dated February 25th, 1991.

Looking through them, I realized I was uncovering the archive of my own evolution. I can see the progress of my life by how the writing has changed. In the earlier years, the entries were a reflection of the walls around me. I wrote what I felt safe writing. If my environment wasn’t secure, the details were sparse and guarded. I used vague language and leaned on hints rather than facts, dancing around the truths of what I was experiencing.

​But as the years moved forward, the pages started to fill up, and the shadows disappeared. The more I grew and secured my own life, the more detail I put down. I stopped using code. I began to name the people, the places, and the raw truths of my experiences. The shift was gradual from those thin, careful notes in that first steno book to the unfiltered, sprawling entries of the later years, where nothing is hidden.

The physical journals in the tote stop on October 22, 2025. The writing didn’t end there, but the medium did. On October 23, 2025, I began recording my life in the digital space for the convenience of it. While the decades of paper remain in that tote, my new entries allow me to organize my life in a way I couldn’t before. Moving forward, I can search my thoughts with a few keystrokes, making it easy to track recurring themes and patterns as they happen.

Looking at that stack—from the blue ink of the ’91 steno book and thinking of the digital entries I’m making today—I’ve done a lot of work. Now, as I start to build a searchable history, I’m curious to see where I go from here.

​It feels like success.

Memories of Letter Writing: From Crayons to Classrooms

When do we count the start of our experience?
I remember when I was 4, maybe 5, lying on the yellow shag rug in my bedroom, writing my first letter. I wrote that letter to the mailman in crayon, on the back of a junk mail envelope. I wrote the second letter as a follow-up to the first one, which hadn’t received a response. I wrote three letters that winter, trying to get a response. I did not succeed.

A young child with blonde hair lies on their stomach on a thick, yellow shag rug, focused on writing or drawing with a crayon on a piece of paper. The room is filled with soft, warm light, and a colorful, checkered bedspread is visible in the background.


The next memory I have of letter writing is the assigned pen pals in second grade. The teacher gave each student a sheet of penmanship paper with a space at the top for a drawing. The assignment was to draw a picture of something we wanted, and to write a letter about it. I drew a picture of a one-story house with green grass and a big yellow sun. The teacher proofread it and told me I had misspelled ‘horse’ as ‘house’. She pointed to the lawn in the lower corner of the picture and told me to draw a horse there. I did as I was told.

A child's letter on lined penmanship paper lies on a wooden desk surrounded by scattered crayons. The letter, signed "Lauralynn," says "Dear Pen Pal, I want a horse." Above the text is a drawing of a red house with a brown horse standing on the grass next to it under a bright yellow sun.


In middle school, passing notes became a big deal. I remember the orange lockers that lined the red carpeted main hall of our Jr. High School. I met my round-faced friend at the library steps after lunch. I handed her a letter. “I’m thinking of being a writer,” I said to her.
She glanced at the paper before she shoved it back at me.
“You didn’t read it,” I said.
“I don’t need to,” she laughed, “you can write a three-page letter about hair spray, and make it interesting.” She turned to the right and headed to class.

Two middle school students stand in a hallway with red carpeting and a row of bright orange lockers. One student, wearing a grey t-shirt and backpack, holds a handwritten letter while talking to a friend in a green shirt. Other students are blurred in the background, creating a busy school atmosphere.


I went on to write for classes in high school and college, with a few miscellaneous pen pals here and there. I’ve written a few speeches, as well as some marriage ceremonies and church services. In addition to my blog and social media posts, I currently write a class outline and student handouts for a local photography group.

A wooden desk holds a laptop displaying a "Photography Class Outline" and several printed "Photography Class Handouts." An open journal with handwritten notes sits in the foreground with a pair of reading glasses nearby. A camera, a white coffee mug, and a smartphone are also on the desk, illuminated by soft window light.