Over Thanksgiving I was helping my Mom clean out some old boxes when we came across my 5th grade school journal. I’m not exactly sure which class it was for, but apparently I was asked to write a short journal entry each day throughout the school year.
Flipping through the pages was as hilarious and nostalgic as you would expect (who writes in cursive anymore?), but I was struck by how many of the entries sound eerily similar to something I might say today. Granted, it’s written the way a 10 year old version of Bryan would put things, but a surprising number of topics and statements are consistent with how I view the world at 28 years old.
I’ve been thinking about what to do with the journal, since it would be a shame to let these pearls of 5th grade wisdom continue to sit in a box, untouched. Since one of the best ways I can think of to honor writing is to share it with the world, I thought it would be cool to share one journal entry per week throughout 2016.
My plan is to post one journal entry per week on this blog—verbatim—as well as my current interpretation of whatever topic I wrote about as a 10 year old. It will be interesting to see how my thoughts have changed and evolved (or not) after 18 years. I’ll predict right now that my 5th grade self will turn out to be more sage than I ever would have expected.
Here’s my first post in this series.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I will!