On the first page of my journal…

Last week I purchased a Moleskine notebook to begin the next installment in my line of journals, which I’ll use for lack of a better word. More accurately, it’s a scattered anthology of random, unchronicled, indiscriminate thoughts. There’s is no correlation between the first and second, second and third, or even the pages in between each. Even the physical properties of the journals vastly varies in shape, size, color, texture, and so on. The solitary trait that binds all twelve (or so) of my journals is that all of them have empty first pages.

My first journal dates circa 1997, when I moved to Hershey, PA. Neither the relocation (I still miss you, Jersey) nor my prepubescent years were extraordinarily difficult, but I was able to find peace in moments of solitude. Scripting just gave me a pastime. Puzzled over what to include in my first page, I wanted to set the tone for the subsequent the pages. While I never planned on, nor do I today, divulging their content, I always assume that someone, other than I, would eventually read them, if only in my prospective, posthumous state. So, I just skipped the first page and before, I knew it I was on to the next journal, facing the same dilemma.

One would think that I would learn to accept it and just excuse my lack of creativity as a tradition of some sort, but I can’t. For some reason, diminutive, insignificant specks of life annoy the crap out of me. I handle life’s “bigger” problems with relative ease…go figure!

Ladies and Gentelmen (and Barack Obama if you’re tuning in), I decided to waste your time this afternoon to tell you that this morning, I finally put something on the first page of my journal. Oh, the anticipation!!! I simply drew a smiley face. No words. No famous quotes. Not a cut-out photo of Megan Fox (this may be up for renegotiation). Just a big, unattractive smiley face that laughs at my EVERY time I open the damn book. IF I was rolling on acid, it would probably jump off the page, do a backflip, and shout, “10 years and 10 journals later and all you came up with is a freakin’ smiley face! What a joke!”

I’m glad I don’t drop Acid. That experience would be horrifying.

So, what am I in the process of doing? I’m at Borders buying another Moleskine journal. This smiley face is going into the first bonfire I see, Fahrenheit 451 style.