Straight No Chaser

Quoi

decide, before scrolling down, whether you're going to do this activity, which involves perusing through some of your own past entries. i'll give 2,000 gift points to each of the first five people who participate--email me to let me know, if you think i won't notice that you've done it.

to start, travel backward through the history of your journal and choose the entries numbered 6, 25, 74, 120, 182, 199, 201, 239, 276, 344, 361 and 398. (if you don't have enough entries in your current journal, you can either use a previous journal that's been filled, or modify the numbers i've chosen--by changing or removing the digits in the hundreds place--to generate numbers that'll work for you.) here are mine:

6: "Foxglove" 
25: "Yes!" 
74: "Vicious" 
120: "Peripheral Vision and Guilty Pleasures" 
182: "Zeuses" 
199: "Quake" 
201: "_ _ _ _ _ _" 
239: "Early Morning Entry" 
276: "Pouring" 
344: "Finding the Bottom" 
361: "When Sleep Comes Slowly" 
398: "Hottentot Venus, The and the Ugliest Woman In the World" 

now, the questions. this thing, obviously, is designed to inspire genuine reflection on your life as it extends beyond and is manifested in your journal, so be honest. roar.

without opening entry 6 ("Foxglove" ), see if you can remember, from its title alone, what the entry was about.
probably a toni morrison reference. in love, which i guess i was reading for that crazy woman's class, one of the characters killed another by putting foxglove in his food. i can't think why i'd have written about it, though. i probably wanted to kill someone, that day. lord knows who.

copy the last sentence of entry 25 ("Yes!" ). use it to start off a new paragraph, one that's relevant today.
i'd love to hear what you guys think. krystle, who has this incredible notion that it's okay to be completely territorial with another human being, freaked out via phone last night when she found out i was hanging out with a big group of people that included chris. it is important to note that she and chris are not officially "together" at this point, and that she would never dream of actually issuing a mandate prohibiting the two of us from hanging out or speaking in her absence, because she knows that's ridiculous. he and i were friends before he started hitting on her, and we're friends now, and i have no intention of coming between them for any reason. but she's mad (yay), and she wants to have a "serious talk" about it when she gets home from north carolina (double yay), and, yes, i'd love to hear what you guys think. whether it's not just me.

if you sealed entry 74 ("Vicious" ) in an envelope and mailed it to your twelfth grade english teacher, what would (s)he say?
ms. adamson loves me, and i sort of think she'd be thrilled to read all the writing i've done since graduation, but i think this entry would bore her, just as it does me. and she'd complain about the lack of capitalization and my use of the word "oneupping," which she used to say was a lazy substitute for a thousand other words i could use. that woman. i miss her.

what extraneous details do you remember about the day you wrote entry 120 ("Peripheral Vision and Guilty Pleasures" )?
that, when i went to taco bell for lunch, i had a baja blast mountain dew, got hit on by a man old enough to be my grandfather who claimed he was a preacher and dropped my debit card in a storm grate on the way out. also my boss wasn't at work that day, so i left early, and i stopped to see charlie and the chocolate factory on the way home.

what has changed about your life since you wrote entry 182 ("Zeuses" )? what's the biggest difference between then and now?
i no longer get a kick out of writing seven entries all in a row, and i think i'm a little less obnoxious with the personal shoutouts. a little. and also, whereas at that point i was still only speculating about jodi being ernie's secret girlfriend (hence the entry title--"zeuses" referred to the biggest hint that tipped me off and eventually convinced me that i was right), by now i think we all get the idea. and i don't say "meh" anymore, thank god, and i'm not mad about the homecoming fiasco anymore, and i've revoked my membership to a club or two, since then.

rewrite entry 199 ("Quake" ) as a haiku.
racism is bad.
white supremacists still are!
THINGS WILL ALWAYS SUCK.

do you stand behind the sentiments that inspired entry 201 ("_ _ _ _ _ _" )?
the sentiment, apparently, was that i was in the mood to self-express, but too tired to write an entry of any actual consequence. i think it's clear that, at the present time, i totally stand behind that. i feel that way a lot, lately. i'm eager to fill these last hundred blank pages. eager to get started on a new journal. i feel bad when i haven't written anything in two days, because this is the only regular writing i really do, outside of the paper journal, which lately has deteriorated into a laundry list of everything i've done, and shouldn't have. and i think the surveys are fun, i like the sort of coloring-book feel to them, the idea that any two of us can make something completely different out of the exact same question.

what happened right after you wrote entry 239 ("Early Morning Entry" )?
i turned on some regina carter and ate eggo waffles!

if the following people--your mother, your significant other, a young child you know and a mental health professional--walked in on your computer with entry 276 ("Pouring" ) displayed on the monitor, what would each one say?
my mother, i think, would be shocked at how candidly i write about what she thinks should be personal, private things. i have yet to ever hear her say the word tampon aloud; when i was younger she used to call them "those things," and bras she calls "undershirts," and she doesn't believe in really embracing one's own emotions. i think she'd find a prompt like that completely self-indulgent and culturally biased, and she'd be disgusted with me for taking it seriously. marcus would think it was cute, a little melodramatic but well-written. a young child would lose interest immediately, and a mental health professional would, i'd like to hope, find me extremely emotionally average. not extra mature, but not too bad, either.

rewrite entry 344 ("Finding the Bottom" ) as a limerick.
there once was a girl named shan-non
who felt bad about what she'd done.
she tried to undo it,
but already knew it--
her shaky self-image was gone.

how do you feel after rereading entry 361 ("When Sleep Comes Slowly" )?
i feel a horrid sense of trappedness, because my every complaint, from this entry, applies equally to my life currently. she's still loud. she still farts. she still hasn't been to class and she still talks about me like i'm not in the room.

for a new reader, would entry 398 ("Hottentot Venus, The and the Ugliest Woman In the World" ) be a good introduction to your journal? is it an accurate representation of the way you write and your usual subject matter?
i'd like to think new readers would start with something where i sounded a little less totally fed up, but i actually kind of like this entry. expressive and succinct. i'd rather them see that than all the endless rambling.

what has reading through past entries brought back for you?
either i got really lucky and picked a bunch of unnaturally positive entries, or i don't put enough of my story in print, or i actually had a happier year than i remembered having.