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My eighth grade journal.
I kept a journal when I was 13-14 years old. The Acme steno pad pages have started
to fray and yellow, and so to preserve them I have scanned each page and put
it back together in a PDF. Click
here to the ongoing PDF creation online, or right-click to save to your
computer. The links below are to the individual page scans.
A few excerpts of this journal make their way into footnotes that accompany
the more autobiographical entries in my first book, God Save My Queen: A
Tribute.
I describe my experience as an eighth grader at Our
Lady of Perpetual Help elementary school in Maple Shade, New Jersey, and
ends a few days into my freshman year at Camden
Catholic High School in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
Among other topics, I talk about reading books, lifting weights, girls, fulfillment,
happiness, Bertrand Russell, General George Patton, Jesus Christ, America, sports,
and the thirst for knowledge. I'm not sure if the journal makes for great reading,
but it does show the mind of one 13-year-old in Southern New Jersey in the early
1980s.
Here's an excerpt, transcribed:
[March 25, 1982 To reach personal & spiritual perfection one must achieve
a proper foundation [to] lay it on. One must live a clean, healthy life and
have high morals and be virtuous. That is, you do not have to be divine to be
perfect. Or do you [.] Benjamin Franklin tried to be perfect, using his little
booklet with 13 virtues to combat the many temptuous [sic] evils. But he was
defeated. That is not to say he was a better person in the action of this deed.
He was happy to see himself improve day after day. What Franklin did (and so
[many] countless others did) I must do. I am certainly not a good person. Far
from it. But then all human beings, being driven by their human weaknesses,
aren’t good either. So I shall try to be a good and wholesome person,
imitating Our Lord Jesus Christ and the brilliant thinker & philosopher
Socrates. Both kind of introduced things to us (ignoring any leanings to my
Religion) that greatly improved the human race. I may not go that far, but as
far as I’m concerned I’ll be satisfied with strictly internal, personal
pleasure. Oh how I’ll be tempted. To just throw away all responsibilities
and turn to Satan. That, I must admit, is very tempting. But it is through accepting
our responsibilities and working toward richeousness [sic] that we shall achieve
satisfaction and Eternal Life. Every step you take towards richeousness [sic]
is a step on the flight of stairs to God. But I sure hope I won’t trip
on the way up into the infinite flight.]