This is the first time in my life that I have ever filled an entire jour­nal. I was given this Mole­sk­ine as a Christ­mas present in 2008, and didn’t find the courage to write a sin­gle word in it until July 2009. Every day since then, I have kept this with close, always within reach. Some­times, I went weeks with­out writ­ing any­thing in it, but it was there when I needed it. It was there for me to con­fide in. I wrote to-do lists, song lyrics, story ideas, recipes, I drew and painted pic­tures, ripped pages out, I filled it with quotes and excerpts, moments, praises, doubts. I wrote in it the day I almost died. I wrote in it the day my father died. I wrote in it the day I moved out, the day I found a job and then quit it. I wrote in it when I vis­ited my best friend for the first time, I wrote in it every time she vis­ited me there­after. I wrote in it when I saw my favourite band in con­cert for the first time, when I made new friends and regained old ones.

I wrote in it when I had no where else to go with the words I needed to say.

I dis­cov­ered myself in these pages, I dis­cov­ered who I am and who I don’t want to be.

A sense of panic hits me now, on what I’m sup­posed to do. I already have a new Mole­sk­ine, this time a red one with blank pages. But, I know that, for a while at least, I’ll con­tinue to carry this one with me. To be with­out it would be too raw. Calm, though, fills me too. My life is here, real and pure and per­ma­nent. I don’t regret a sin­gle page within this. I don’t regret the days that I didn’t write in it, or the days that I wrote too much.

I made a life within those pages. I will make a new life for the next pages.

lyrics shown are “Ask DNA” as writ­ten (and per­formed) by Yoko Kanno & The Seat­belts, from Cow­boy Bebop the Movie: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.

It’s exactly as the tweet says. To explain it more thor­oughly would almost ruin the fun, but it’s for the best. To begin, you should know if you don’t already, that on March 1st I’ll be mov­ing into my first apart­ment. I’m finally tak­ing that leap into adult­hood, and mov­ing out on my own. I real­ize March 1st is three weeks away from today, but on top of being extremely excited, I’m also ridicu­lously OCD. I’ve been pack­ing, unpack­ing, trash­ing, untrash­ing, repack­ing, and I’ve filled 3 boxes with books, 2 boxes with DVDs, 1 box with albums, and 1 box with pretty much every­thing else in my room. Except for the essen­tials, every­thing is ready to be car­ried into the car and taken to the place I’ll soon be call­ing home.

Aside from try­ing to decide what to do with every­thing I already have, I’ve been try­ing to decide how I’ll dec­o­rate this new space of mine. Do I go shabby-chic, mod­ern, min­i­mal­is­tic, bright and vibrant… Do I deal with the fact that I am only 21 years old and every­thing I own in the way of fur­ni­ture and decor is likely to come from the thrift and dol­lar stores.

Yes, that’s exactly what I do. Except, for today’s case, I bought decor for my soon-to-be bath­room off of kijiji, a site sim­i­lar to craigslist. For $45 I could be the proud owner of an antique med­i­cine col­lec­tion from the 1960’s. It was an impulse deci­sion, but I e-mailed the seller, ask­ing if there was any other inter­est, and that if he would just hold on to the col­lec­tion until I could pick it up on Tues­day, I would pay him $50 instead. A few hours later, I got an e-mail back say­ing that not only would he hold the entire col­lec­tion for me, but he would throw in a few antique chem­istry instru­ments he had just found as well.

Today, at noon, my mom and I met him in the park­ing lot of one of the mall’s of my city, a bright and open place. He was a nice, elderly gen­tle­man, and the sale was quick and easy, but he took the time to actu­ally explain some of the items to me, which I thought was really nice of him. It’s so much more than I expected to get, and with just a lit­tle bit of damp paper towel I wiped off all the bot­tles when I got home, and every­thing looks splen­did. My plan is to buy some shadow-boxes to hang up and down the one wall of the bath­room, and voila, instant vin­tage decor!

how is your bath­room decorated?