Me Making Books Making Me

For those of you that don't know, I make books. It's one of my hobbies. I've made them for all kinds of purposes: to display my photography, to contain short stories or messages to a loved one, and in one instance to catalogue the trajectory of a failed relationship (though I didn't know it was going to fail at the time). However, my favorite kind of book to make is a journal. That's partly because it's easier to make a blank book than to accommodate content, but mostly I just like the act of creating something that ends up takes on a life of its own long after it is "created," and reflexively plays a part in the making of oneself.

An empty journal is filled with possibilities. Over the course of the many months or years that it takes to fill up, it tends to take on a life and purpose of it's own, summarizing that portion of one's life that is poured into it. Over the course of its life it may be called upon to help work through a difficult break up, or maybe just bare record of a particularly great day. It travels with you, taking mental photographs of the events and thoughts experienced in a foreign land. It's there when you are trying to decide what school to attend or which job to accept or for each of the fifty times you vow to never again spend an entire evening watching Seinfeld reruns. And it's there to record your disappointment when you do it again.

But none of this has yet happened when I paste in that last inside cover, or snip the thread from that last stitch; when it's "finished." Some of the most beautiful books I've made have gone on to be fairly mediocre journals: sporadically kept, records of cyclical thinking. And yet some of my most aesthetically bland books are my most cherished. Books that helped make me. There's no telling what meaning or identity a journal will assume by the end of it's life, and that's why it's always exciting to start a new one.

And that situation is where I find myself right now. Today I finished the journal pictured above. I've kept it for the last couple of years and it has born witness to some very difficult times as well as some great ones. Mostly I'm excited to close that book and move on to the next as I feel my life is ready for a new chapter to be written. The timing of this change is quite serendipitous as its occurrence coincides with the change to a new year and a new decade. I'm happy to leave behind a lot that has happened in the last several years. In the next few I'll venture into some uncharted waters as I go to grad school; move, first to a new house, and ultimately away from Denver; continue to seek for "the one;" and take a more proactive approach to my job search. There are likely to be a lot of twists and turns along the way, a lot of big decisions to be made, and there's certain to be a lot of joy felt as well as some heartache and discouragement. But for now, all that is ahead of me, waiting to be written.

Over the last two days I made my new journal. Who knows what it will become by the time its pages are filled. The possibilities are endless.