Unburied Treasure

Today’s picture -- your most treasured item. This one is easy.

I didn’t even have to think about this one for more than a brief second, all I thought was ‘what would be the thing I’d grab in case of a tragic blimp accident?’ and since I always say that Matt is a person with legs who can fend for himself (and we don’t have any pets or kids), this box is the highest of priorities.

It is my storage box which contains everything I’ve ever written after age thirteen (I had a little teeny journal before that but have never been able to find it so I think I must have tossed it years ago). 

• Every scrap of paper I’ve maniacally scribbled a note onto (except the tiny Comp book in my purse).
• Journals that sit half filled. The pattern which they were written in wouldn’t make sense to anyone but me. I tend to journal by mood so depending on how I was feeling, that’s the book I reached for at the time.
• High school journals that are so over filled I sometimes had to staple half sheets of scrap paper in the back or wrote directly on the inside of the back cover.
• Folders, full of college-ruled paper containing handwritten nouns, adjectives and verbiage.
• And yes, that is the final, edited copy of my first ever completed manuscript on the left side in the binder clip.

I know you’ll all think I’m nuts (well more than you already do perhaps) but I used to drive around with this box of writing in my trunk. That’s right. Okay, the work was in a different box back then but, yes, it sat in my trunk at all times.

When I was nineteen and living on my own for the first time, my house was a party house.  Crazy numbers of people came over on any given night to toss a few back and get loud and obnoxious. I was NOT about to let these things that came out of my imagination, things that could potentially be expanded on and crafted into fully edited, marketable writing, become a pile of beer soaked goo.

Or worse yet, be read by someone.

So this half full box of my words went everywhere with me instead. Obviously I’ve picked up new journals, written on countless scrap pieces of paper and printed lots of stuff since then** and admittedly this box is about at capacity now so it looks like it’s almost time to dig out the roots and transfer to something new.

For the most part, I treat my writing like a plant. Once it becomes restrained or constricted inside something that’s too small for it to breathe, it either dies back or I move it into a new container where it can make use of the air around it to absorb all those new thoughts and ideas that feed it well. This one is about 14" W x 14" D x 8" H.  That's not high enough anymore, so it is high time for a new container.

Not a chance the new box will be anywhere but the back seat when we move.

**In addition to this box I generally keep my removable external hard drive well within the vicinity of my handwritten stuff because anything electronic I’ve typed up (like this blog post for example) is stored on that. A much more compact box to say the least!

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Catch up on anything you missed  30 Photos, 30 Days
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