An archival pull
Grab some tea, we're diving into the journals
August 5th, 2004
I went to Wyoming for vacation. I also went on a plane for the first time. That wasn’t the best part. I went horseback riding and it was raining and lightning. I almost got struck by lightning like 10 times. P.S. - we went to the rodeo show and when the guys tried to catch the cow the cow ran into the fence. I felt bad for it. Oh one thing I didn’t mention was the great mountains! One of them was 13,000 ft. WOW!
March 4th, 2010
i’m trying to be an overall better person, just in general.
June 26th, 2010
I rode 8 miles on my bike today!! the power is still out for the 3rd day in a row. im freakin BORED. currently writing by a flashlight. it is SO HOT in here. guess what?! one month til JOHN MAYER.
October 26th, 2011
WOW! Ok so there’s lots to write about. got an A on my ceramics project that I literally just bullshitted to look “abstract”. but mostly music is taking over my life. mylo xyloto is pure genius. been 2 days and i already know all the songs. i just keep listening to it!!!
April 24th, 2012
Things I would like:
-cowboy boots
-concert tickets to literally EVERYONE
-a job so i can buy those^
-cute bathing suit
-my license…it’s getting sad at this point
-california
-new york city
April 3, 2013
the day my iTunes decides to work and not delete everything in my library will be a miracle!!!
October 13th, 2015 (London)
a month + a half in this beautiful, electric home away from home. today was the 1st day (i think..) that I did pretty much nothing and it felt so odd. i’m so used to adventuring and dropping everything to explore that oops i forgot school is still a thing. if i can stay out til 3 am partying, i can do a paper til 3 am right?? same thing.
December 8th, 2015 (London)
4 3,000 word papers down, 2 more to go - brain is slightly fried, slightly delirious, slightly sleep deprived. but 10 days left so no time to sleep. wait forgot to mention we met the vamps again lol. this is what happens when an hour study break turns into a trip to Kingston and going to an album signing. it’s stuff like this that i’m gonna miss. just getting on a bus and ending up at an acoustic gig 20 min later. LONDON I LOVE YOU.
December 8th, 2017
Sarah and I reunited for a weekend in one of my favorite cites — NEW YORK! took the train friday night after work and ubered to our Upper East Side airbnb. well, what a start. my incompetent self couldn’t get the door open, so just casually stranded on the streets for an hour. weirdly enough her old boss lived literally 2 apartments down. met up with her and eventually got into our airbnb. IT WAS SO LOVELY. we all headed to a 24 hour diner for the best comfort meal one can have after hours of mayhem. then we went to a hip coffee/bar for drinks and s’mores. early 2000s jams and good company, what more do you need in new york?!
March 28th, 2019 (Japan)
Day 6: JAM PACKED. lots of crowds and making haste. Sagano Bamboo Forest was first, which would’ve been cooler had there been less people, but still epic. we deviated from the tour to explore/shop in the Arashiyama district. we got bamboo + cherry blossom ice cream - DELISH. also bought a scrunchie because on brand. truly loving those tiny streets at night with the lanterns all lit up. we then got to experience yummy Japanese BBQ (1 hour and not a minute longer).
Early September, 2019 (Paris)
ahhh where did I leave off?? the night bike tour, mais oui! easily one of my favorite things we did. have you ever rode through the streets of Paris at dusk with the crazy vespas and taxis over the Seine and through the arrondissements and just being like yep…this is exactly where i’m meant to be right now. stopped for la glace, took a (freezing) boat ride where we saw the Eiffel Tower all lit up - it was magnefique! the next day (friday), we slept in and headed to our favorite crepe place in our neighborhood. le gaufre avec des fruits!<3 after walking the Champs-Elysée including to Ladurée (!!!) and taking many pictures in front of doors (lol), we went back to the hotel to nap and woke up just in time to head to the Louvre before it closed to see the Mona Lisa. shoutout to us for waiting until 8:30 on a Friday night to go to the Louvre ( no lines, merci!!)
December 14th, 2019
so it’s saturday. the vinyls have been played, the christmas tree farm candle is burning, and housewives is on. it’s been an emotional rollercoaster of a week. actually, not really a rollercoaster, because that would imply there were ups, and lemme tell you, there weren’t!
HERE & NOW
For legal reasons I didn’t include anything from 2020–now. Too recent. Plus some things have to be saved for the memoir ;)
There’s no rhyme or reason, no method to my madness, of flipping through old journals. That is, not until after, when I remember moments I’ve forgotten, or laugh at how I handled past roadblocks, or reflect on a hard time that grew into a period of growth and eventually, peace. August feels like December to me; reflection feels like second nature. Golden hours during happy hour aren’t the same as they were in June, when playfulness and OOOs and that second margarita on a Tuesday were still fair game. Now we’re all a little more alert, sitting up straighter, gearing up to structure our days to the sun’s timing, like the back-to-school rush is still our raison d'etre before September, 10 years later.
ICYMI: I wrote about diners in Thank You Very Much! You can read that here.
And THANK YOU FOR READING! This was a fun exercise, if nothing else than to remind myself to write how I’m ~feeling~ alongside what I’m ~doing~ when I travel. I keep separate journals for trips, as one does, and reading them back is funny because it’s a whole lot of ‘I did xyz today and ate at xyz restaurant’ when it’s like, no but what was my MIND up to!!! Funny how the things you think you’ll want to remember aren’t what you actually want to—at least not entirely.
This weekend I’ll be praying to the OpenTable gods and driving a lot and hopefully making a dent in High Fidelity. CIAO! xx
Another banger. Too much French though. Not all of your readers are cultured