from the handwritten archives

I know a few people who, over the years, have tried to make their blog into their journal. They end up posting things that should have been written on scraps of paper and burned, and then wonder why they get no comments. It's because everyone is embarrased for them.

Along with blogging, for the last few years I've journaled a little. Once in a while I pull out an old one and skim through it - it's amazing how one can relive the glory and pain of a few months by reading what was written on the page.

Tonight I paged through my first Moleskine. ("my first Moleskine" sounds like a product that a writer would buy his toddler....). It was a gift I received while speaking at a conference...a conference where I said a lot of things that, had they known I was going to say them, would have led them to invite someone else.

The early entries in that journal - scribbled at the event and on the plane on the way home - reference the fact that I'd gone 90 degrees from conventional wisdom and rattled cages. I was bothered by that, but not to the point of wishing I'd not said what I said.

In the margin two days later, I wrote:

"Living without fear of man does not mean peoples' reactions never bother you. It means that they never sway your course."

Not a bad way of thinking. I'm going to page through this one a little more slowly.