09/19/2024
Have you ever thought something was new in your life and then realized it had been there all along?
Making journals is one of those things for me (Junia). I might have only recently learned how to bind a book with a 3-hole pamphlet stitch, but the truth is that I made my first book when I was 13.
It was 1991/1992 and for those of you who are old enough to remember, the first Gulf War has just started. It was the first war I was actually old enough to understand and at 13 I had a LOT of thoughts and feelings about it. So to process those thoughts and feelings I decided to make a pop-up book.
It still makes me laugh a little bit - why a pop-up book?!? But something about it must have resonated with 13 year-old me. I spent weeks writing the story, creating the illustrations, and constructing the book - pop-ups and all. I typed the story out on the typewriter (because I’m that old 😳), cut each line out, and glued them down with rubber cement (not the best option if you want something to last a long time, as you can see from the pictures 😕).
That book is still with me. No matter how many times I’ve moved, no matter how much stuff I’ve donated or given away as three kids entered my life and their dad exited, it’s stayed with me.
So it turns out that making books has been something that lights me up and makes me feel alive, even though it’s been dormant and unused for decades.
How about you? Do you have something in your life that you thought was new but has actually been with you all along?
