I'm watching the Wedding Singer, my happy place movie. "Everybody spread the word...I live in my sister's basement." Gets me every time.

One not so great part of turning 30 is having to renew the driver's license. The peeps in my world are probably sick of hearing about this, but seriously, I take the DMV personally. I feel like it's designed to completely ruin your day. The setting is grim. You enter this incredibly drab room with horrible lighting, take a number that tells you you're about 5o people away from being helped, and plop down on a dingy and uncomfortable plastic chair for what feels like hours and hours. You try to occupy yourself with a book and end up distracted by the snarkiness emanating from the employees behind the counter. After an hour and ten minutes of painful waiting, insult is added to injury as you stand in front of a cheap turquoise sheet and have The Worst picture of your life taken. (Oh my God. I look like THIS!?!) Think I'm going to start using the passport for identification purposes.

So, even though I can't seem to stay away from blogging, I am still working on other types of writing. I'm trying to get back into the practice of journaling a little bit almost every day. Most of the time I write emotionally overwrought, self-pitying crap, which is what my friends assure me a journal is for, but other times I just write about different topics and some potentially okay things come out of that.

Actually, I forget how difficult it is for me to journal, and I'm struggling with it again this time. My internal censor goes into overdrive as I scribble self-revealing words on paper. Sometimes I feel like that little voice of caution is persistently thumping on my stomach saying, "No, no, no! Don't do it! Stop yourself! What if you die suddenly and someone ends up reading this?" The blog is much easier, because mostly I'm just writing my own funny little stories about things that happen in life. I can put a spin on it, and, for obvious reasons, I know being choosy in what I say is the right thing to do. (OK, OK. Maybe I should have given the flashlight device story a bit more thought before posting.) That doesn't work with the journal, as the whole point is self-reflection and writing about the things you won't necessarily say to anyone else.

So yeah. It's stupid and totally self-involved, but while I'm writing in the diary at night, I usually spend at least a few minutes obsessing over the whole "What if I die tomorrow with this left out on the nightstand?" scenario. Journaling about my journal worries doesn't even help ease the fear. In that situation, you know that someone in your family will inevitably pick up the journal and read it, because you are dead. And, they won't even mind your crappy, emotional writing, because they will be glad to have this piece of you, this glimpse into your inner world that didn't exist for them when you were alive. Then it will probably get passed around to other people who will feel the same way. But who's to say you won't mind? I mean, maybe you'll be off in some sunshiny place, skipping around in fields of lavender and lilacs without a care in the world, but maybe not. Maybe you'll be hovering around anxiously, biting your ghostly nails, as he or she flips through page after agonizing page of details and thoughts and feelings about things you may or may not have wanted people to ever know. Maybe you'll still care about how what you said makes them feel, and about how they will evaluate you as a result. Maybe you'll end up berating yourself for putting it all out there on the page, carelessly leaving yourself exposed as you leave your life behind. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Or, quite possibly, maybe you'll just be glad that the people you know and love will find, among the pathetic whining, the feelings and words you either couldn't express, or didn't have a chance to say, while you were here and wish you had. I don't know. In the end, maybe it doesn't matter at all.

Music I'm loving right now: Peter, Bjorn & John (it amuses me to call them PB&J) Writer's Block, The Trucks (love these girls, especially the songs "Shattered", "Messages", "Come Back" and the great intro), Bloc Party, The Blakes, and, of course, The Shins Wincing the Night Away.