This is an atypical post. Atypical because it’s ‘imageless’. And guests to a photographer’s blog expect images to accompany the posts. It’s ‘imageless’ because having to include images more often than not deters my desire to pen a journal entry. I need to clear all deterrence to penning journal entires.

I remember the very first attempt to write in journals. I can’t remember exactly how young I was, but I do remember that I must have been pretty young, because I do have a fragment of memory that shows a scene of a 10 year old kid (thereabouts) finding that very first journal. I remember how illegible the handwriting was, and how delighted I was to find that ‘treasure from my childhood’

And I also remembered that this very first journal wasn’t meant to be a journal. It was an old unwanted organizer whose existence had probably been forgotten. I can recall how I recalled back then, seeing people writing diaries in movies on tv. That organizer had columns with dates on the pages. So I thought that must be what a diary looks like. So I started to write in my very first journal at five, presumably. But somehow stopped writing for some reason. The ten year-old who found the five-year old’s journal laughed a laugh of maturity, shaking his head at the childishness of the five-year old. The laugh turned into a smile. The ten-year old was determined to really keep a journal from then on and not once again let the years in between slip away.

The estranged relationship between my journal and myself spanned over various stages of my life; spanning over the years of my carefree and careless childhood to my confused teens where I had the periodic desire to express the intense feelings of an impassioned youth in writing – there were countless episodes which I thought had motivated me to keep a journal of my life. I had lost the ten-year old’s journal, together with the 15-year old’s. I think the 20-year old was too proud of himself, or maybe just too insecure and unsure of himself, to keep a journal. I also lost all the poems written by the drunken twenty-something…And now I’m hoping that the 5 year-old’s journal must be lying around somewhere. I really remember seeing it in recent years. It’s really frustrating to have a nagging thought such as this gnawing away the back of my head .

Forget those dratted journals who simply refused to stick with me. Or me with them. Oh well, what does it matter. There were pages that I managed to keep in my heart – the entry about my very first journal for one. And meeting my very first love that followed years after. The years of courtship that followed. The breakup that followed. Meeting my wife. My most lovely wedding. The trials of my marriage. The joys of mundanity. I’m not even sure if these pages will be there in my heart for good. The chapter on the leap of faith to turn my passion into my lifelihood. The first tear I weeped for the beauty of the wedding that lies before me. The first smiles of the grateful couple when they saw how their wedding was immortalized. And flipping through these pages of my past in the quiet of the night is a beautiful luxury. Yet I wish there were more than just those loose pages fluttering about in my heart, threatening to vanish in the mad rush of chaos of what those around me call life.

So here it is, a new journal once more. A real one this time. For real. I hope I’m not gonna lose any more (or too many) pages of my life. Or the wrinkled and shriveled old me will be shaking his fists at this reminiscent fool for being fickle once again.