One year, nine months, 250 entries.

It doesn't sound like a lot; in fact, I wish I'd been a little more prolific. But I'm proud of all of them � the early, rough entries, the haphazard ones, the deeply personal ones, and even the two I deleted in a fit of belated late-night dislike.

Quite by accident, I noticed my last entry was number 249, and decided this was as good an excuse as any to peruse the archives and put together a little something commemorating the experience of keeping this journal. But not a mushy retrospective � no, in keeping with my personality, I'd far rather fete the occasion by poking fun. And rather than make it short, sweet, and meaningful, I've decided to exercise no restraint whatsoever; hence, the table of contents you see above. Sure, I'm meandering, but at least I offer you some shortcuts.

First, a few statistics:

• Number of times Doug's name is used: 300
• Number of references to cookies: 23
• Uses of the pronoun "me": 1,586
• Number of times I mention "weight" or "fat": 38
• Mentions of Notre Dame: 60
• F-bomb droppings: 89
• Uses of "shit": 34
• Uses of "love": 365
• Uses of "hate": 82 (Woohoo, love wins! I'm a lover.)
• Mentions of being drunk/drinking: 75
• Uses of "booze" and "boozehound": 18
• Discussion of hangovers/being hung over: 20
• Mentions of the word "puke": 0, which is indeed a shock given my apparent hangover problem

THIS WILL TEACH ME TO OPEN MY MOUTH: THINGS THAT CAME BACK TO BITE ME

"It's been my goal to kick off a bit of self-analysis -- the sort of thing where I look deeply within myself and pinpoint that which makes me weak and insecure, jotting down pompous and knowing conclusions about My Shame Spiral, Transference, Validation. Then, I try to correct these things on my path to becoming a better Me, a Me without chocolate and potato chips, a Me that ministers to the less fortunate, and a Me that can remember where the hell I put my sunglasses." -- June 29, 2001
Update: I'm still insecure, I still eat chocolate, I eat more potato chips, I only minister to the less fortunate if retail clerks at The Beverly Center can be considered "the less fortunate," and to top it off, I still can't find my damn sunglasses.

"It'd be nice if she and I connect on a friendship level." July 28, 2001
Update: We didn't.

"My sisters got me a color scanner, so I might be able to ritz up this site a little, or at least share some photos." -- August 16, 2001
If you take a look around, you'll notice absolutely no evidence that I actually do own said scanner. Well done, Heather. Way to achievel

"There's a blue wool sweater folded neatly in my closet, tucked away out of sight, a memory, a piece of you reserved for private moments of need." -- August 22, 2001
Yeah, so I don't have that any more. I passed it on to the folks at Goodwill, which in truth was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

"I'm no amateur. I won't jump up and down with a magazine, swinging left and right with reckless abandon. Fool spider; I'm better than that." -- August 27, 2001
As it turns out, I am not better than that.

"I've decided to buy a bike. �I want to try other means of outdoor exercise, because running doesn't always inspire me to do anything but walk and pant. If I own a bike, I can ride with Lauren, or Doug if he's willing to try a rookie trail. And if we're still together. No, I'm just kidding! Gallows humor, people. It's my psyche's best medicine." -- March 13, 2002
This one is funny on so many levels. Not least of which is the fact that not only am I without a bike, but Lauren is probably about to sell hers. Perhaps my inaction was actually prescience.

"I totally want to take classes and learn grip techniques that take the strain off your hands. I really want to become good at climbing." -- May 22, 2002
Ha ha ha, HA, oh, my stomach hurts.

"Dear Cowboy-Who-Digs-My-Roommate: Hi! DO NOT FUCK UP. Hear me? I don't care if this is a passing fling or a long-term thing. Either way, please do everything right, okay? Because you don't want me coming after you. Billy Blanks and me, we're pals. He's taught me everything he knows about conquering and kicking and jabbing people with my fist. So if you even think about screwing her over, or you feel the psycho coming on, you be careful, because I'm not afraid to come after your flat ass (yeah, she told me about that). Love, Heather." -- May 30, 2002
Update: He fucked up, the insane bastard. But I have yet to chase after his flat ass and beat the crap out of it, mostly because if I see him again I can't promise that I wouldn't feed him through a paper shredder.

"Clearly, I have to become a pastry chef. It's so obvious. It all makes sense now." -- January 12, 2003
Oh, yes, clearly. Clearly.

"I'm pricing tennis lessons." -- July 8, 2001
Woohoo, a goal achieved! I did indeed price the lessons; nothing more, nothing less.

� OR, MAYBE NOT

"Maybe I'll make it all the way to dinnertime without snacking."
No, as a matter of fact, I won't.

"Maybe if I clench my eyes shut, click my heels and murmur 'There's no place like home,' I'll finally figure out where home really is."
Nope.

"Maybe I should give up and subscribe to People Magazine, instead of pretending I only buy it when the whim hits me and then making sure the whim is weekly and completely pre-planned."
Done!

"Maybe I should throw out the turkey in the fridge that I bought last week, because it's starting to go bad."
I did. And I don't regret it for a second.

"Maybe I'll never have an idea for a screenplay, or a novel."
I'm beginning to think this one's true.

I HAVE SERIOUS ISSUES:

"I can be outgoing and social and chatty�why is it that certain situations suck me dry? That shyness is one thing I truly dislike about myself, and it's regrettably the trait I'm least able to shake�.I'm proud to be independent � but that doesn't make it any easier to watch a budding friend so at ease with her crowd -- and me, on the outside, tapping gently and a bit enviously on the glass but too afraid to knock and disturb the party." -- June 4, 2001

"I am a loser." -- October 12, 2001

"I touched down on Burbank tarmac and heaved a sigh - not of relief, but of resignation. I was home. And I wasn't. Other flyers greeted loved ones with enormous bear hugs. I had nobody. This isn't unusual; the entire time I lived in Austin, I returned home on my own, but somehow this time I felt lonely. And more than that, I felt distaste� Right now, I am not invested in this city and I don't particularly want to be here. It fuels the introvert in me. I feel weakened. "How is LA?" people asked me. "It's... LA," was all I could reply. It's not me. I am not it. I am not in it. It is not in me." -- October 5, 2001

"My ass decided quite independently of me that it would actively thwart any abstinence and, in fact, it opted to swell in size. This does point to a problematic rift between ass and mind, a conflict of interests and a butting of heads - pardon the pun -- so an intervention is afoot." -- June 21, 2001

"Somehow, we got onto the topic of insecurities. Specifically, that I have a ton, and Doug doesn't have any. He's the most well-adjusted guy I know. There are no neuroses there. No anger, no tears. He rarely gets emotional about anything, and doesn't get disappointed. He just shrugs and moves along merrily. This bothers me. It shouldn't, but it does� He said, "I can't think of anything worth being insecure about." Which sort of hurt my feelings, because I thought he was implying that whatever completely normal, human insecurities I have are pathetic, bogus, bunk, stupid, invalid. And all those tics are so tightly interwoven with my persona that to call them stupid, to find them pathetic, is to find me pathetic� When I'm being dramatic, when I'm trying to press someone until they crack, I often drag things to embellished extremes� It's as though I'm daring people to agree with me, while at the same time challenging them to say the right thing and drag me back into sanity. So in the case of Doug, I think it's because I'm waiting for him to finally give up and admit that which I don't want to hear - that he thinks I'm a weak and feeble person, and that he looks down on me for having insecurities that he doesn't let creep into this hermetically sealed psyche. And if he admits it, then I don't have to wonder about it anymore. -- December 14, 2001

"I'll just hit snooze until 8:39. That's ninety-nine minutes of the clock screaming periodically. Ninety-nine. That's one red balloon floating in a summer sky for each minute that I partake in this courtship with my snooze button." -- April 23, 2002

"I'd like to have a scheme, a big dream - I know I want to be very, very successful at what I do, but I don't know what that will be� know I want to write. Something. Anything. I'd love to create top-notch original scripts, but I'm afraid that if I commit to it and then fail, I'll be absolutely stranded and crushed. Honestly, I think that's what it is - I'm afraid to make a plan that, in the end, will outsize me." -- January 19, 2002

"I felt happy. And in embracing the feeling, I realized how long it's been since it genuinely hugged me back." -- December 3, 2002

"Maybe it was vanity that impelled me inside, the inexorable tug of the insecure egomaniac desperate to find flaws in her beauty and beauty in her flaws. Maybe it was the dripping tap that drew me in, with its relentless, grating symphony of rhythmic rain on porcelain. Or maybe it was the merest sight of my reflection that stirred some kind of unconscious comprehension, as if, even from a distance, I saw enough in my eyes to pull me toward myself, into my soul through a wide window of black-puddle pupils. My arrival there has a hundred possible beginnings, but identical ends. Twin tears snaked down my cheeks before I even realized I was crying." -- November 17, 2002

"That's one of the only things I wish I could get back from my Miami years: The simple ability to forget. To shed my skin. To dance, brave, and wash away with the rain. -- December 16, 2002

ALCOHOL AND ME: PARTNERS IN FREEDOM

"I love my hangover. Thanks, friend. Bravo, nausea. Headache, I salute you. Dry-Mouth, I'll call you next Friday -- promise! We'll go bowling. And as for The Shakes, well, you're okay, but more like that friend-of-a-friend who tags along on group outings and doesn't add anything to the conversation, but who knows a guy who knows a guy that can get us free movie passes." -- June 22, 2001

"Maybe it was that second White Russian that did me in last weekend; maybe it was that third beer." -- July 25, 2001

"I hit rock-bottom this morning. My co-worker Jen was puking in one bathroom stall and I was kneeling in the other getting ready to retch. We're classy broads. We stood there in that bathroom, hunched over, laughing ourselves sick. Literally. -- March 1, 2002

"I did wake up this morning wondering, "Was I loud? This always happens� When I rehash the evening's mirth, lying sprawled on my bed and daring myself to stand up and let my head spin, the questions nibble at me. How loud was I, really? Am I an annoying partygoer? �Why were we saying the word 'dickknife' all those times?" -- July 13, 2001

"I need a muse. Or a really good bottle of tequila so I can drink to forget my irritating, probably baseless and ultimately unsatisfying self-pity." -- August 6, 2001

"I went to two premiere parties, one for my show and one for Making the Band. I met Trevor. I hugged Trevor. I slurred something complimentary at Trevor. I scared Trevor." September 7, 2001

"Rick got a picture of me, still tiara-clad, chugging from the can. We then called in a couple other stragglers from the office and had our regular Friday afternoon beer. That is by far the best policy I've ever introduced." -- August 19, 2002

"Notre Dame is impotent, and I'm weeping into my beers. Note the plural." -- October 1, 2001

"I have a total hangover today. At work. With a script due. I want to beat my head against the table until I pass out. � Last night, one of the producers basically decided at 5 p.m. that he needed to be in a bar right that second, drinking heavily with all of us. So after an ugly round of drinking darts, we ditched out on work and went to an Irish pub down the street from my apartment. �I go there figuring I'll just have a beer or two, and be home in time for ER. But what I hadn't taken into account is how utterly easy I am. Seriously, I am ridiculously, flamingly, predictably, pathetically easy. Want me to drink? Tell me to." -- October 11, 2002

"I begin The Morning After by swearing off alcohol forever and ever, and by the following day I'm all, 'Maybe next weekend,' and three days later I'm lovingly applying torque to a Rolling Rock bottle cap." -- June 22, 2001

POURING SALT ON THE WOUND: THINGS THAT CAME BACK TO BITE ME, PART II

"I just feel incredibly blessed that [San Diego is] also the closest Naval base to where I am -- that way, I get to participate in some of what he does, and I finally get to watch his personal growth up-close. We can have each other, and under the most optimal conditions available. Wonderful luxury, that. It's worked out so well, though, that I'm nervous at what kinks might lie ahead." -- June 18, 2001
Okay, you, well, just be careful not to get smug, okay? I mean it. Don't do it.

"We are stronger now. We grew the right ways in our time apart, and we're piecing things together in a slow, sweet way, now that the luxury of time and leisure will soon be ours." -- June 24, 2001
WHAT did I JUST TELL YOU about being smug? Why don't you ever listen to me? I'm not as dumb as I look, you know.

"Short holidays like this tend to feel longer without a jam-packed itinerary, we reasoned, so there's no point in being active when one can curl up on a couch and doze intermittently during the Boston College game." -- September 1, 2001
This one packs a particular wallop, given that one of his later problems with me was the amount of television I watch. Seriously, the boy's mother was practically nagging at him to take me somewhere fun, and he was like, 'No, that's okay, we're happy on the couch.' Uh-huh. Apparently, 'happy on the couch' is a fleeting state of being.

"I felt mature, and proud of both of us for being honest with each other�.I'm actually pumped to find out what the rough patches are going to be, jazzed at the idea of the challenge, because I'm totally convinced we're going to triumph over them." -- December 18, 2001
Uh-huh. Well done. A sentence like this would certainly never, EVER come back around for a bitch-slap. Noooo.

"I'm crying on the phone and he's telling me he hasn't decided if we are right for each other, and if he had, 'We'd be married by now.' He's making it sound like a test. A test I'm failing without having seen all the questions." -- March 12, 2002
Trust me. You didn't want to see the questions.

"I have to stand by my gut feelings. I have to stand my ground. I have to realize that it's okay to have these feelings of doubt and uncertainty, and that I shouldn't apologize for them." June 23, 2002
Well, it's about damn TIME, girl. My God.

"I'll never forget his warm eyes and rumpled hair, mussed from our hugs, his face alight with a glow of affection I'd sorely missed and an aura of sadness that broke my heart for the thousandth time. And that is what The End looked like: my beautiful, loving boy, exactly the same yet still different." -- June 30, 2002

"'You know, for the last four months we were together, we just weren't ourselves,' I observed. 'You and I, we weren't who we are. I wonder what would've happened if we'd just kept acting like our true selves instead of giving in to ... to whatever we became.' He thought about this. 'Yeah,' he said softly. 'I wonder.'" -- August 29, 2002

"Maybe I'm the only one who can decipher the coded lies in my lines. Maybe it's because I knew all that was there, that although we officially broke up in June, we'd already been irreparably broken for a long time. But I can't change that; for whatever reason, back then, I needed to believe the fiction. He did, too. This is just the part where the catharsis of pouring yourself into a diary backfires a little -- you have firm proof of who you were that day, for better or worse, and you live with what you wrote. What, exactly, did I think I was selling you? And why was I also selling it to myself?" -- December 11, 2002
Could've been worse. I could've been peddling Amway products.

HUH? WHAT THE� EH?

"What if I turn orange? No, really. I'm scared. I found great peeled baby carrots at my grocery store. I've been bringing them to work and munching during the day, trying to head off the chocolate cravings with the natural sugar in carrots. � So what does Jill do? Why, my esteemed co-worker tells me her friend in NYC went on a carrot diet and started turning orange-yellow. �Thanks. I start perhaps, on some level, not minding carrots so terribly, and then I find out I'm about to turn orange. I'm going to be a muppet. Oh my god. My finger looks yellow. I'm not even kidding." -- June 7, 2001

"This city reeks. Quiet, scenic Sarasota is besieged with the funk of 1,000 years, the stench of Satan's britches, the aroma of a landfill doused in year-old milk and then puked on by an onion-sucking yak." -- September 9, 2001

"My co-worker Grant and I conceived a spin-off show for the WB's 7th Heaven, wherein one of the holy Camden children moves away and starts up an alternative church with rock music and hedonism and a giant mosh pit of worship. Crossover potential abounds, as the disapproving Reverend Camden and wife visit their rebellious child's new-style church and tsk-tsk at the wackiness of it all. Title: Moshing for Christ." -- June 14, 2001

"It's official: My 90-year-old grandmother negotiates stairs with more finesse. Toddlers are less clumsy. Infants who can't even stand are more adept with the concept of "downstairs." Fetuses are more coordinated. My left knee was badly skinned, the top of my foot had a scrape, and my right-hand knuckles sacrificed some skin to the white wall and bled lightly. Ouch. I mean, OUCH. OWWWWW. Mom! God pushed me down the stairs!" -- July 10, 2001

"When I was young, my mother hated that I loved Easy Cheese. But because I was young, and an extremely picky eater, she bought it for me and fervently prayed I'd exit the phase swiftly and with no nostalgia. Then we moved before I turned six, to a land free of aerosol cheese; when we moved back stateside, I'd forgotten. Oh, but it was nice squirting down memory lane." -- December 21, 2001

"Maybe Grimace, in her youth, was savaged by a felonious onion and hasn't quite recovered from the anguish and ignominy. Sourpuss might be vehemently anti-spoon. Who knows. But it's more likely they're both just bitchy." August 21, 2001

"What is up with Triangle Man? Why does he hate? And why does he always win when he gets into fights? What does he do that always leads to victory?; Does Triangle Man cheat?; Does he scratch and bite? I bet he does, the bitch." -- October 25, 2001

"Six blocks away, you finally glimpse the silhouette of the office complex surrounding the lone Herbalife building that pushed through the fog and into our hearts. And then we turn inward, realizing that smog is not just in our world - it's in our souls, shrouding our essence in a morass so thick it takes a century to wend through it and burrow to the core of our individual selves. Until then, we turn on our fog lamps, fumbling around, groping, wondering where the AA batteries for The Sears Craftsman Flashlight of Truth might be. Some days, stymied, we might retreat, burrowing under the fort we made with our bed comforter, the brown table and chairs and four particularly stalwart stuffed-animal soldiers crusading for freedom in a world of intellectual pygmies and repressed liberty; else, we cower in a shell of polluted fallacy that doesn't have an airhole and makes the room smell vaguely of a stale omelet. We sit that way, shivering, until we pay the heating bill. The bullshit piles higher, higher, higher. Melodrama sneaks into my kitchen and steals my Jif for a PB-and-BS sandwich on rye - but the joke's on him, because everyone knows rye bread is the earthly manifestation of Satan's deodorant." -- November 8, 2001

"I need peanut butter. My stomach is saying, "Slather me with the brown love, bitch, or I'm quitting". -- December 27, 2001

"Me, I endured a quick dream about turning in a handwritten draft of my next script, and finding out later that I'd accidentally written an episode of The Golden Girls on the pages of the answer-book for my grade twelve provincial physics exam. Here's where I get excited, although I confess, it doesn't get more titillating than Rose Nyland's story about raising a cross-dressing goat in St. Olaf and calculating its coefficient of friction, or the way Dorothy decorated a cheesecake with Avogadro's number." -- January 11, 2002

"I've come up with a brilliant new idea. A cunning decorating scheme. A money-and time-saving renovation technique that makes 'white trash' look positively... well, beige: Shelf paper - contact paper - as wallpaper. Think of it: Sure, there's no taste... but also, no messy glues. No angry landlords ('You painted WHAT? Paint it back!'). And it peels away easily if you make a layout mistake, unlike that other paper� Yeah, okay, no. It's the worst idea in the entire universe. It's actually stupider than Crystal Pepsi. Dumber than Heather Graham (almost). Lamer than when Freddie Prinze Sr. turned to his wife and said, 'Let's have a son!' And trashier than a pile of trash from Anna Nicole Smith's 'Things What Are Trashier Than Me Is' Ziploc baggie that's already been screened for useful tidbits by a local hobo. -- July 22, 2002

"Grant and I have decided to open a store called 'Erotic Kites.' We're not sure what it'll sell yet - racy kiting gear would obviously be an excellent start�Carefully placed copies of Playkite Magazine that depict kites in a variety of saucy poses? Kites in the shape of genitalia frolicking on a gentle west wind? Pictures of naked kiters running with delicious abandon through the meadow, titillating kites flying from strings attached to their bouncing... wrists?� We'll stock overtly naughty kites, discreetly naughty kites, Kite Erotica, sassy gift ideas for the budding erotic kiter in your family, and lip balm. -- September 17, 2002

HEATHER: It's been a long time. What if I've just completely changed?
DOUG: I'll still love you.
HEATHER: What if I'm... a guy? What if I sit you down and express to you my burning desire to live in a man's body?
DOUG: Um.
HEATHER: Would you fall out of love with me?
DOUG: Well, yeah, probably! You wouldn't be the same person I fell in love with.
HEATHER: Sure I would. It's still my same personality. It's just going to be inside a masculine physique.
DOUG: And going from a man to a woman is a major personality change.
HEATHER: Gender isn't personality.
DOUG: In that case, I think it is.
HEATHER: No, it isn't! I make the same jokes, I like the same things, but I just so happen to have a hankering to self-actualize as a man. But it's still me inside.
DOUG: What IS this?
HEATHER: Come on! What would you do?
DOUG: I want to go to sleep.
HEATHER: So you'd stop loving me if I became a man?
DOUG: Well... I mean... I guess, probably, yeah.
HEATHER: Ah, I get it, so you're saying you only love me for my body?
DOUG: No, I just think --
HEATHER: Aha! You only love me because I have breasts!
DOUG:I quit.
-- August 15, 2001

OTHER RANDOM POOLS OF DROOL:

"There's nothing Cookie Monster can't do." -- July 10, 2001

"It's such a strange way to live, always looking ahead and letting the present lapse into something unremarkable." -- July 13, 2001

"A chocolate donut would be perfection�'I would love it if someone bought donuts,' I moaned this morning. Grant just looked at me. 'Donuts are so unbelievably cheap,' he laughed. 'Why don't you just go buy some?' Poor, innocent Grant. So ignorant. -- August 10, 2001

"Every time she smiles at me, every time my Dad and I laugh together at The Simpsons, every time we cook dinner as a team, I start to cry inside because it can't last." -- September 20, 2001

"Everyone has a master plan, an idealistic life blueprint built of the who, what and wheres squeezed from our wildest dreams� The Plan is bunk. It is the stuff of fantasy, and little else. If I lived by the Plan, I'd be eating fruit all day." -- October 7, 2001

"When I inquired about the apartment itself, he simply said, 'Well, it's a two-bedroom, and I believe it has features.' Features? Like, a nose?" -- October 18, 2001

"Frequently, and not to my credit, I bitch and moan about how annoying people can be. But then I go read Obscure Store, and my interest in humanity is renewed. Specifically, I'm interested in idiots. Creative idiots. People whose logic is so inept, it's ingenious. People who trade in twisting the truth with a sculptor's artistry, yet are sufficiently dim as to lack awareness that they're doing it." -- October 7, 2002

"There are some mysteries in the world that should stay unsolved -- like where Michael Bolton went, or the death of legwarmers. Or, what my father sounds like when he says the word 'sex.'" -- January 8, 2003

"Debates have never been my strong suit, save for the one in high-school in which I argued an issue in a language no one else understood. We simulated Canadian Parliament by debating in both French and English, but as the lone student who didn't know French - as a newcomer, I hadn't been privy to the country's years of forced French studies -- I was allowed to deliver lines in Spanish. My relative fluency, combined with a forceful and impassioned delivery, so impressed people that it didn't matter what I actually said. I scored an A for contending that, with regard to Quebec separatism, "There is no air conditioning on the dinner table, so I am shamed by the knives and wardrobes and windshield-wipers that pollute your scoundrel government...The cat and the chicken ate peas! Go clean the bathroom! It's cold out with a hint of snow! My name is Juanita!" And who was going to prove me wrong? We won." -- August 15, 2001

"During Notre Dame's victory against Florida State, I was tensely packing up dishes while stressing about the tight 10-10 contest. Then, finally, Notre Dame broke open the game, and I threw my hands up in the air in triumph. And my fist smacked right into our light fixture. Lauren, in the other room, heard simply, 'YESSS!!!.... OH GOD, HOLY JEEBUS HELL, FUCKING SHIT!' She was puzzled until she entered the living room and saw the light swinging like a pendulum, me beneath it doubled over clutching my throbbing fist." -- November 5, 2002

"Money. It forces us to make decisions like this, to prioritize people and places and memories that shouldn't ever have to be ranked. Some people say that's 'growing up,' but it feels more like 'growing apart.'" -- February 8, 2002

"Some dumb girl I've never seen before (the entire office is fascinated by the fact that I have a mystery woman) overheard me relaying something to Lauren in the bathroom, and burst out of the stall yelling, 'You tell the WORST stories!'� She then started ranting at me because I look 'too innocent' and I need to be 'much angrier.' Um, 'whatever.' She wouldn't let me out of the bathroom until I screamed at her, so I totally screamed at her and backed her up against the wall. It was kind of fun, except for the part where she's a mental case. She walked out of the bathroom and Lauren and I were just like, 'What just happened in here?'" -- March 1, 2002

"But I can't get past this nagging idea that everyone else is drawing a master plan, while I sit in the back of the classroom and sketch stick-people with A-line dresses and no knees." -- January 19, 2002

LOOKING BACK TO LOOK AHEAD:

"The thought of putting myself out here every day, even when I have nothing to say, is frightening and exhilarating, and is the kind of challenge I'm craving right now. �Can I keep an audience that isn't captive? What if nothing happens today? Do I smell cookies? Why is the remote in my roommate's bathroom? [But] I'm excited to start this. It's all about practice, and for me, probably some quiet catharsis too. From what I've seen, this is the perfect, supportive environment in which to do it, one in which no one knows me but we're all friends; in which I can be saying nothing and everything; in which I can be brave and afraid." -- May 31, 2001

But:

"My story is just starting. I'm not the person I want to be. I'm still too uncertain of myself, still convinced my ideas lack originality, still timid about my career and still uncomfortable within my own skin." -- September 7, 2001

Thanks for everything, guys. I'm still figuring it all out, but this place has gotten me further than you'll ever know.