90 Miles from home in 1999

After 28 years in the same home, my parents are moving, so I've been going through a lot of my old things lately. I went to get what remained in my old room a few months ago. I piled it in an unused room in our house, intending to sort through the memories and keep what was necessary. I make it a point to do this often so I'm not weighted down with so much stuff. Sometimes Eddie can't believe the kinds of things I'll throw away...or shred...or burn.

I don't like clutter. Before my methods are attacked, I'll have it known that I do hang on to special things. I'm not a total hard heart but I like to assess what needs to be saved or condensed on a regular basis. It keeps everything in perspective and allows for only special items to become sacred because of their meaning to me - not just because I've had them for 15 years.

Off track.

Anyway, I found some disks in an old booksack from culinary school. I suppose they had been spared from the purges because they concealed something important OR I'd just never had the time to open any of those files since I stored them in that old Jansport. I took the time yesterday.

I found an old journal kept during the time of my first culinary internship at the Marriott in New Orleans. Here are a few clips.

Week One
"In a new city, there are certain living arrangements one needs to make simply to function without hassle from day to day. This morning, I had made none of them. I got stuck in a toll lane, never having dealt with a toll bridge. I would have to adapt. I wound up paying for parking...all 14 dollars of it. I am now officially working to park. Fun. Fun. Fun."

Week Two
"My intention is to stand out and learn as much as possible in the time allotted...if it doesn't kill me."

Week Three
"Here's hoping an "experienced me" can thumb through these words in a few years and have a nice chuckle at the lack of self-confidence they convey." Nope. Still the same Kristen. No matter how many successes, she's still convinced her first failure is just around the corner.

Week Four
"Self doubt is a nasty thing. Over-analyzing a situation, unfortunately, is one of my strong points."

Week Five
"This week marks my last here in the Riverview and I couldn't have left with a bigger bang than ringing in the new Millennium by serving 200 people 8 courses. I was invigorated. I wasn't helpless or scared, it was affirming to perform quickly and to respond without hesitation."

Eddie's got the other couple of weeks e-mailed to him because I couldn't extract them from the disk. I can't wait to read THOSE.

I think I already know what they'll say. They'll say that I'm still Kristen and she hasn't changed, really. I'm a little older, a little wiser and a lot less shy but I'm still me. Every time I've kept a journal, (sporadically) I've written to a me in the future assuming I would be a different person or that I would have forgotten the who that I was when I wrote it. I thought that as I aged, I would transform into someone dramatically different. That didn't happen.

I'm glad it didn't.