Perestroika went out with the 80s.

There's a reason that I'm, at least for the moment, calling this journal Perestroika. Perestroika - which was one of two fundamental changes Gorbachev instituted on the Soviet economy when he came to power in the mid-80s - means restructuring or rebuilding in a profound way. That's what this is: an effort to rebuild my journal. I've kept a journal fairly faithfully since 1.Feb.1990 as a series of written volumes. The physical writing continued until the end of August 1997, when I became so thoroughly dissatisfied with the state of my life and the rut I'd fallen into that I abandoned the written journal entirely. Ever since that point, with the notable exception of entries I made in July 2000 and October and November of 2001, every entry I've made has been typed.

The point of all this? On June 14, 2003, the physical volumes of the journal (seven of them in total) were stolen out of my car as I was working on "Kenneth, What is the Frequency?". I'd had them in my briefcase, which was part of the booty the sub-human maggots pilfered. The days immediately following the theft were nothing short of horrible. Lost sleep, crying and everything that would accompany the loss of a friend. The days are better now. I've largely recovered, but I still have flashes of realization that the journal is still gone, and will remain that way for the rest of my life.

The main way I've coped with that is to accept that maybe that period of my life is something I've held onto for far too long anyway. My last year and a half of high school, the year after, then college (Creation, London, theater, Nicole), then the year after that... I realized that maybe I should just let all of that go. My actual life has little connection to that time, as such, except for the handful of friendships I still carry from college, and the fact that I'm still involved in theater. In the meanwhile, I've had six years of life that have come and gone that I don't feel terribly attached to, mostly because a large number of them have negative emotions attached to them (all of 97, 99 and 2003 so far (the first half of 2003 sucked royally), plus excerpts of the others). But, despite everything, I still enjoy my life far more than I did at this point four or six years ago. So yeah, that's the silver lining to that.

Plus, the loss has caused me to focus on my journal, the near-sacredness of it, in a far more meaningful way than I was ever able to before. There might even be a fighting chance that I'll start getting back into the journal habit, at least with a little more regularity than I've been keeping it in the past few years.

So, this is my Perestroika.