Cassie's Literary Journal Experiment

31 August 2018: Friday

I'm in King's Canyon National Park with Maegan and Curtis Taylor. It's been fun. They are cool people to travel with. They are very easy to be around.
King's Canyon and Sequoia are really remarkable places. These trees are so big and impossible not to gawk at. It's so impressive.
I'm worried that once school starts and I'm not able to escape and go travel when I get stressed out. I'm worried that I won't be happy even after I have checked all the things off my bucket list.


Variations:

1. Bullet points

• I'm at King's Peak 
• With Maegan and Curtis Tayor
• School starts soon

2. Flipping it (first last, last first)

Even after I check all the things off my bucket list, I still might not be happy. And that worries me. I escape when I get stressed and now that school is starting again I won't be able to leave on a moment's notice. I've been so impressed by the trees at King's Canyon and Sequoia National Park. They make me feel small; they make the world feel miraculous. I've been around people who are fun to travel with. 

3. Negative

Traveling with a married couple post-breakup is not fun. No matter how cool Maegan and Curtis Taylor are, it never leaves my mind that this was supposed to be a couples trip and I am missing my couple. The world is so impressive to look at and I wish I had someone to share it with. 

I've mostly handled the breakup by running away and not being in places we made memories together. When school starts, I'll be stuck in Provo, just surrounded by all the places that remind me of him. I'm already sad just thinking about it. Eventually though, I won't even have places to run away to anymore and I'll still miss him. I'm worried I won't be happy ever again.

4. Positive

Meeting Maegan two years ago was one of the biggest blessings in my life, and I'm so glad I like her husband. I thought I might feel like a third wheel, but they are both so chill that I haven't at all. It's so exciting to me to have friends that like to travel with me. We have gone to four National Parks on this road trip and right now we are in King's Canyon. The sequoia trees are taking my breath away. They are unlike anything I've ever seen. I want to go everywhere. There are so many places to see in the world. When school starts, I'll be exploring the world more theoretically from books, and that will be an adventure too. There is a never-ending adventure ahead of me and the fact that I don't know what comes next scares and excites me. Life is endless.

5. Key words

Kings Canyon

Sequoia

Cool

Maegan

Curtis

Impressive

School

Stressed

Writing the positive and negative version was the most interesting to me. Both stories are true and accurately reflect the feelings I had about that trip. It is interesting because on paper they sound so different, and like maybe one has to be true and the other can't be. But really a complex variety of emotions existed within me at the same time. And writing this I realized that I get to choose the narrative I pull out when I recant this experience. When I tell people about the trip, I always choose the positive side. But I also always know that the trip was really emotionally difficult for me because I had just called off a wedding! It's interesting how people can be multiple people at the same time. It is also interesting how form matters in telling a story. Whether I use bullet points or key words, or make the story more linear rather than how it was written so choppy, it affects the recall and highlights different aspects of the event. This was cool!