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I have always been fascinated with blogs...much like I was once fascinated with journals. Blank pages just waiting to be filled with brilliant, interesting, memorable, funny, sad...stuff. I have a beautiful collection of journals and I was in love with each of them for about five hours before feeling like I had absolutely nothing to say that was worth permanently recording on paper.

After careful selection of which color pen I wanted to use, whether or not I wanted to write in print or cursive or all capital letters like my dad did...I would try to begin writing on the first page of an overwhelmingly empty journal. I would write until I messed up or misspelled a word or became disenchanted with the topic...and I would tear it out.

Page two.

Maybe I'd switch to writing in cursive so it would look prettier, but then realize that my cursive was only pretty in fifth grade when I had a dotted guide down the middle of each line.

Page three.

Then I'd have nothing brilliant left to say and I would set aside my empty masterpiece for a later time.

I'm sad to say I never filled a journal cover to cover...hell, cover to page five. I never made something so untouchable and invaluable that someone generations from now could read and feel like they knew me.

I recently went home to Colorado and spent an entire day looking at pictures and things I wrote in grade school, from short stories and poems to letters or "journals" that were nothing more than recycled notebook paper bound with yarn. Ugly things. Terrible spelling written in crayon or colored pencils with certain places scribbled over. I never kept those...I'm so thankful my mom did. To read what I wrote when writing wasn't about being brilliant or clean or even sensible finally gave me the BALLS to start something I have been wanting to for so long. Luckily with blogs, I have neat "handwriting" and there's always the backspace button...just in case.

Life is beautifully imperfect and should be remembered that way.

So here's to the brilliant, interesting, memorable, funny, sad...stuff that I didn't know how to bring to life with words in ways that were as special as the stories themselves. Here's to imperfection...