There's no better way for me to be creatively motivated than to open up a new notebook or journal with a pretty cover. And because I tend to compartmentalize everything in my way of thinking, I have a lot of them hanging around the house for specific uses. On our trip to Europe, I took a journal that my mom and dad had given us as a shower present to record our trip as well as a small spiral notebook to jot down whatever I needed to during the crazy long flights and the week off of work. I didn't want them to mix purposes. The journal got updated daily, with summaries of our adventures, written by the pool. Unfortunately, the small spiral notebook was used only once, and its purpose was to stall us at security right before we literally ran through the Frankfurt airport trying to catch our last-hope flight to Barcelona to get on the boat.
I have one journal in particular that means the most to me, if there were a hierarchy. I have had it since high school and I brought it with me to Nebraska. It's thick, with bright white pages, and its cover is made from a beautiful pink and purple paisley silk scarf. I got it for Christmas in 2002 from my aunt and uncle, as the very first opening page states so clearly. I remember deciding that it was too pretty to be used as just a journal; no, it must have a special purpose. So it became my Quotebook.
I have always loved quotes. (Or quotations? I can never remember the rule, but my personal preference is quotes, so that's what I'm going with.) I had pages and pages of them saved on my computer, and I would always go searching for them whenever I was feeling a certain way. So looking back, they really are a way of remembering who I was as a high schooler, and what I must have felt; I just did so using the words of other people.
The first quote in the book: "If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." Toni Morrison
The last? "Love is not complicated; it comes directly from the heart. It only becomes complicated when the mind tries to translate it."
And some from the middle:
"When one door closes, another door opens; but so often we look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones that open for us." -Alexander Graham Bell
"If you can dream it, you can do it." -Walt Disney
"Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them." -Ann Landers
I imagine this sequence was a result from some boy issue I was having:
"You can't make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up to them."
"Some things are worth waiting for, even if they keep you waiting forever."
"Sometimes the thing you want most in life is the hardest to get; stop trying so hard and just maybe it will be easier to receive."
"Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one, so that when we finally meet the right person, we will know how to be grateful for that gift."
And my senior quote, which was perhaps not my favorite, but one that reflected how I was feeling at that time, though I think a different version was printed:
"Beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad; it's what you do in the middle that counts the most." -Hope Floats
I pulled this book out today for a project I'm starting to work on, but while flipping through it, I couldn't find just the right one that I wanted to use. While all of these words meant a lot to me as a teenager, I'm no longer angsty about love and my future. So, I'll have to update it with some quotes as I search for "the one" I want to use for my project. And of course, I'll share that update with you.
I have one journal in particular that means the most to me, if there were a hierarchy. I have had it since high school and I brought it with me to Nebraska. It's thick, with bright white pages, and its cover is made from a beautiful pink and purple paisley silk scarf. I got it for Christmas in 2002 from my aunt and uncle, as the very first opening page states so clearly. I remember deciding that it was too pretty to be used as just a journal; no, it must have a special purpose. So it became my Quotebook.
I have always loved quotes. (Or quotations? I can never remember the rule, but my personal preference is quotes, so that's what I'm going with.) I had pages and pages of them saved on my computer, and I would always go searching for them whenever I was feeling a certain way. So looking back, they really are a way of remembering who I was as a high schooler, and what I must have felt; I just did so using the words of other people.
The first quote in the book: "If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." Toni Morrison
The last? "Love is not complicated; it comes directly from the heart. It only becomes complicated when the mind tries to translate it."
And some from the middle:
"When one door closes, another door opens; but so often we look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones that open for us." -Alexander Graham Bell
"If you can dream it, you can do it." -Walt Disney
"Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them." -Ann Landers
I imagine this sequence was a result from some boy issue I was having:
"You can't make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up to them."
"Some things are worth waiting for, even if they keep you waiting forever."
"Sometimes the thing you want most in life is the hardest to get; stop trying so hard and just maybe it will be easier to receive."
"Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one, so that when we finally meet the right person, we will know how to be grateful for that gift."
And my senior quote, which was perhaps not my favorite, but one that reflected how I was feeling at that time, though I think a different version was printed:
"Beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad; it's what you do in the middle that counts the most." -Hope Floats
I pulled this book out today for a project I'm starting to work on, but while flipping through it, I couldn't find just the right one that I wanted to use. While all of these words meant a lot to me as a teenager, I'm no longer angsty about love and my future. So, I'll have to update it with some quotes as I search for "the one" I want to use for my project. And of course, I'll share that update with you.
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