To think, to write...

Four years ago, I packed up my life and moved it all 500 miles to one small town on the top of a hill in Southern Vermont, without a damn clue what it would turn into for me. I may wax poetic about it all for years, in hindsight, in retrospect, whatever shades that might tint the memories. Everything wasn't always perfect, but the town of Marlboro felt like *home*. But before Marlboro, there was another me. A me who filled journal after journal with tiny cramped writing, drawings, designs, and lord-knows-what workings of teenage consciousness (the first image in this post is a quick view of some pages from an old journal of mine, and two books I hand-bound on the edges of the frame). Most of the writing probably isn't worth reading, but the way I lay out the text and sketches, sometimes weaving strands of text into images makes the journals visually appealing, a flip-book of nostalgia. Once I got to Marlboro I stopped writing and sketching after one journal of nothing but text. My question is, why did I stop? While I'm not prepared to completely answer that yet, here are some thoughts on the subject:

First, why did the content shift to text-only? Was it because I felt I didn't have the time to commit to more sincere creations on the pages? Because I felt my sketches and layout concepts were piddly, and not worth putting on paper? How could I be more self-conscious in college than in High School? My intent in keeping the journals was always that someday, someone would read them. Whether that would be a progeny or a historian, an alien anthropologist... Or maybe I thought they would fall into someone's hands sooner than that, and prove how awesome I was. With that in mind, I suppose the shift was because I started sharing more with people face to face at college, and didn't feel the need to record everything on paper for future transmission.

And then why did I stop writing entirely? Even at times when I could have used some introspection, I didn't write... at least not in paper journals. I began emailing, using Facebook and Twitter, recording my movements and thoughts in communications and snippets. Microblogging. This, so far as I'm concerned, is a significant step down. Maybe even a slide. Then again, I'm not sure all that introspection helped me develop much at the time, either.

I don't know if trying to restart my journaling is a mistake or not (my own version of NaNoWriMo... whatever month it may be). But if I think "nothing I do is worth recording, not the entire day, certainly" then I'm only discouraging myself. Maybe I became more private, in an odd, long-term way.

... and here I am blogging about it. Hopefully posting this will make me more inclined to journal at least once a week...

Self-development...

...is really what this blog business is about for me at this point. It's a good way to get my thoughts out in a somewhat public way without too much pressure, but still enough to keep me on my toes (hopefully). In lieu of spending a few hours collecting links and thoughts right now, and in the interest of posting *something* (it's been a while), here are some thoughts I've written out in other forums recently.

Someone asked me how I relate my interests to each other, specifically, Biology, Photography and Librarianshippy:

I would have to say that it's a lot about documentation and archiving visual information. I started out taking photographs (years ago) with the intention of putting them all in albums and preserving them for posterity. My intentions have shifted since then, and now I feel as if I try to document fleeting feelings I have about a place or time. This is actually extraordinarily difficult. How do you capture all the feelings, nostalgia and hopes of a sunrise without making it look like just another sunrise? I can't say as I've found the answer to the problem. My interest in biology also motivates me to examine landscapes and fauna [especially in close-up form].

And in the process of applying for a job I wrote out this, in response to some questions on the application:

The degree I received from Marlboro College is in photography and biology because I am also a photographer with a passion for knowing how things work on the molecular level. You could say I have a weakness for genetics. However, on a recent 13 hour solitary drive, I came to the conclusion that I really want to make information and knowledge available to as many people as possible. This solidified my conviction that I would like to become a librarian, which had previously been based on my love of books.
It is hard for me to pinpoint specific areas of literary interest. My personal collection is greatly varied, ranging from classic children's books to mysteries and science-fiction, with themes of food, history and, of course, books about books. It's always been very difficult to name my favorite books, but the two that spring to mind are Gastronomical Me, M.F.K. Fisher and The Big Golden Book of Elves and Fairies.

So that's kind of what I'm up to these days. Thinking a lot about what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, where I'm going, and trying to make long and short-term plans make sense together. Meanwhile, my life, built here in Vermont for the last four years, and in this apartment for the last two, is being packed into boxes and shipped off to the future. How strange it will be when I get there to meet it all, and open box after box full of the past.