That was then, this is now.

I should have known at a young age that I would decide on a career in writing. As early as around nine or ten I was getting serious enough about my poetry that my parents bought me a small binder where I could lay down all my verses.

Dig it, man:

My grasp of tense, spelling, and meter would come later.

Oh, yeah? What were you doing in fourth grade?

In high school I pshawed geometry and detailed the story arcs of my daily dramas by way of The Note. As in: Psst…will you pass this three-page, double-sided, handwritten volume so thick it barely folds into quarters to Suzie? Thanks.

In my middle college years I evolved to keeping a diary. Susan Sontag’s journal reflections from yesterday's post reminded me of mine. Not in content, but in the fact that my notebook was also filled with words.

I was not creating art, I was simply vomiting on paper the nauseating truths of my life at that time. I remember moments when I was so frustrated and self-doubting that I would rewrite my memoirs in the way that I wanted them to be, not as they were.

Years later, when the sun started to shine on me with a regularity I could count on, I actually threw away those diaries. They embarrassed me, and I didn’t want the evidence of my human vulnerability to ever be the object anyone’s eyes; not even my own.

Shame. I'll bet there was some meaty stuff in there.