Notes from the notebook: 'June 2006. I don't know what I'm doing'.

Hello hello. 

If you missed me sharing photo of some of my old journals, and introducing the idea of #notesfromthenotebook then you can hop back a post here.  Basically I've been trawling through my old books and plucking out the occasional scribble I think might be worth a second look 

My first delve into my archive has resulted in the following snippet from 11 years ago, a snippet which is almost painfully packed with frustration. 

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20th June 2006 

I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel that there is a stockroom full of work hiding away inside me – and I just can’t get it out. 

There are collages, cards, novels, poems – creations, stuffed inside me.

I can feel the edges of canvasses digging between my ribs; I’m being paper-cut from the inside; there are rolled up pieces of paper climbing their way up my throat and unfurling in my head, drying out my brain. 

I have ideas queuing up to taunt and laugh and poke at me.

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I actually found a photo of me from June 2006, the same month in which I wrote this piece. Here I am - fortunately looking more relaxed - while paddling in the Cornish sea. 

This was a time in my life where I was clearly hunting around for a creative outlet:

• I was unemployed having been made redundant.
• It would be one year until my work (a scrapbook page) would be published in a magazine for the first time (when a message from Shimelle Laine, who at the time worked for Scrapbook Inspirations magazine, pretty much set everything in motion!) 
• It would be two years until I'd meet my long-time friend and collaborator Kirsty Neale, and about the same amount of time until I'd first visit my local crop where I'd meet the crafty friends I still have today..
• And two years until I'd start a blog ... where my love of writing would finally find a regular expressive outlet. 
• It would also be 10 years until I'd publish my first book and decide to start writing a novel. 

I'd like to tell that Julie from a decade ago that she'll spend the next decade sorting out all that paper she felt she had trapped inside her. Tell her to enjoy the unfurling, to write it all down, and not to worry too much ... because it all turns out OK in the end. 

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If you'd like to share anything from your own notebook archive, please feel free ... I loved hearing from you in the comments on my last post. 

There are so many stories out there worth dusting off and sharing with  friends. 

Julie x

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