"i can see where this is going
tears will fall and hearts will break
love's a game we almost played
so dry your eyes and be on your way
as for me, i'll be okay..."

i love new journals. it's like you're starting fresh. the first page is always saved for a quote... and the one i used this time around is walter anderson's "our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves." i decided to drift away from the moleskines for this chapter (mainly because the b&n i went to didn't carry them... ugh) and instead got a leatherbound about the size of a bible with italian script all over it. what it says is beyond me. but it's cool.

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so the first five pages are probably the most depressing words i've ever scribbled across paper. which scares me a little bit but i have about a few hundred pages to get over myself and find something that i'm going to actually want to read back on later.

in the first step of getting myself out of this rut, i decided to look through some pictures from this past year. with the exception of random blurs taken at parties and nights of tapping seasonal kegs at work, not to mention the public displays of drunken debauchery... for every non-candid one that's taken... everyone's smiling. everyone's hearts seem warm... wasn't that something sid said in one hour photo? something about no one taking pictures of the bad memories...

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whenever i'm in a shitty mood i feel like the entire city's drab. of course, it depends on just how wretched the situation is... but that's how i feel. like, if i wake up feeling sick, and it's sunny outside - something just doesn't feel right. even daily chores and obligations become unbearable and i walk around the city with one of arthur nersesian's lines from the fuck-up running thru my head... "you know you've been in a place too long when every other locale serves as a reminder of some sad recollection."

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i mean, that's how i felt when i first left chicago. however, i've come to realize that within the bad - therein lies the good. and then you start to forget why you left in the first place and miss everything you walked away from. and so you have to ask yourself - what's more important: escaping the bad, or embracing the good?

isn't that what life's about afterall?

the journey through the good and bad, emotional rollercoasters, mistakes made - lessons learned... and photographs of every moment in between.

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