Welcome to our friendship journal! I started working on this project in my senior English class in high school. My teacher asked everyone in the class to create some sort of time capsule of what our lives looked like before graduation, so that we’d have something to look back on when we’re older. It sounded easy enough, but the more I thought about it, the more I started to realize that I had no idea what I would put inside of a time capsule. The things that are important to me are my friends and family, and the time I get to spend with them--as cheesy as it sounds, I know that when I look back in five or ten or twenty years at my senior year of high school, it’s them that I’ll want to remember. I’ve been keeping journals forever, and that’s where I got the idea for this one--I decided I would get a composition book at the store on my way home from school that day and ask my best friends if they would help me out with this project. In a way, I guess that it’s sort of a time capsule for all of us--I asked each of them to do a journal entry like they would write in their own journal, so that when the project was complete we’d have a record of a single day in the life of each of the four of us. I hope that you enjoy looking through this journal. We really tried to make it fun to read and even decorated the pages ourselves, too. Honestly, I feel like I got to know each of my friends a little bit better when I got the journal back and read through each of their entries. Now I’m going to go hide this notebook in the attic--maybe my parents will find it when they’re up getting out our Christmas decorations this year, or maybe it’ll stay up there until I get to the reminder I’ve written in my own five-year journal that I started this year. I have no idea what I’ll be doing in five years--maybe I’ll look back and think that the things I wrote about in my entry are silly! If there’s one thing I’d wish to stay the same, though, it’s the friendships I’ve made this year. .But for now, here is what our lives look like today. Love,
Rosanna Fisher
It is very silly of Rosie to think that I would be able to write two entire PAGES of things in a single day, but I love Rosie so I will try. Today I went to school like I always do, and nothing interesting really happened. I went to math class and did some math and then went to English and should have done some work on my own time capsule project but instead had a bubblegum bubble-blowing contest with some of the boys from the football team in the back row. I won (of course), but not without getting a nice swad of gum in my own hair in the process, which Madelyn had to cut out in the bathroom at lunchtime. I wonder if my dad will miss me working at the newspaper office when I leave for college in the fall--I know he has this huge vision of me growing up and taking over the paper, but I don’t know if he’s ever noticed the fact that I don’t get...any work done...ever. Honestly, I don’t know if I can think of many things that I would like to do LESS than be the editor of the Cedar Island Gazette. The problem really, though, is that I don’t have any idea what I would actually want to do. I never really thought about it, honestly, and it feels like the only things that I like to do are sports, you know? Like, if I could just play football forever, I’d be happy, but I feel like that’s pretty impossible--although, I don’t know, because if you’d asked me a year ago I would have told you that being a girl playing college football seemed pretty impossible too, and here we are. All I know for sure is that I’m excited to live somewhere different than Cedar Island. I love it here--don’t get me wrong, but I’ve missed the freedom that I had back when I lived in Ireland--I used to love exploring areas of a town that’s bigger than just a few (wonderful) shops and a handful of (very delicious) restaurants. At the same time, though, I wouldn’t have wanted to grow up anywhere else, and I wouldn’t want to have any other friends than the ones
that I’ve made here. I wonder what kind of person I would be if I hadn’t grown up here, if my family had stayed overseas or if my dad had taken a job working for a different paper somewhere else. I know that I would be different--but how different, and in which ways? ANYWAY. These are MUCH too deep of thoughts to be having here on Rosie’s nice little journal pages. What I really mean to say is that I’ll miss Cedar Island and I’ll miss Rosie and Eli most of all, but I’m excited to live in and experience and explore a new city with Madelyn. There’s something about living somewhere where nobody knows who you are (as opposed to living here, where everyone knows everyone) that I’m so looking forward to. My favorite memory from this past year was probably the entire weekend of homecoming. That sounds crazy, because on paper, that should have been one of the worst weekends of my life, but somehow it wasn’t. I remember falling asleep on Rosie’s floor after the dance with my three best friends in a huge pile of blankets and even then thinking that these were the kinds of things I would miss in the future. And then we woke up and ate cookies for breakfast on the beach, and it was freezing but I think I could have stayed there forever. EW. Mushy. Gross. I’m going to stop being sentimental now and save at least some of my dignity. Okay, I guess that I lied when I said it would be hard to fill two pages of this journal. It actually was pretty easy, although I’m not really sure that I wrote about exactly what I was supposed to do...but oh well! These are the things that I was thinking about today, when Rosie handed me this composition book in front of my locker this morning, so I think that somehow it does sort of represent who I am today...or something like that, anyway. Right now I am eating life savers at my desk at the newspaper office and procrastinating filing the very large stack of papers that continues to steadily grow next to me, and I think that in a few hours I will go home and probably also procrastinate my homework, and then I will probably call Madelyn and talk on the phone with her until I have to go to bed and honestly? It sounds like a great night. Favorite song: Where the Lines Overlap (Paramore) Go-to outfit: jeans, tee shirt, varsity jacket if it’s cold (it’s always cold) Favorite food: pizza What do you think you’ll be doing ten years from now?: Hopefully graduated from school, hopefully doing something I enjoy, hopefully still in touch with all of the friends I have now.
Hello! Today I’m going to write a bit about my day. Depending on who out there is reading this, you may or may not know that I have a twin sister, Violet! Violet and I have always been very close--as I think is common with twins--and up until just a few years ago, when we started high school, we did jsut about everything together. We even shared a bedroom as kids! The reason I’m telling all of you this now is that today Violet got her acceptance letter for music school. It’s sort of silly to feel sad about it, because of course I;m happy for her, and of course I was sure that she would get in because she is insanely talented, and we didn’t even apply to ANY of the same colleges, so no matter what had happened we would have been apart anyway. But I’m still sad! I don’t know what I’m going to do without my sister--even though we’re so different from one another, we’ve always understood each other the best of all. Anyway, I think that’s enough sad things for this journal entry! If I get to read this again someday, I don’t exactly want to remember being sad--I’m looking forward to so much! For one thing, Piper and I will be going to the same college, which wasn’t something that we ever could have planned for or even hoped for, but I’m so, so happy that we’ll be together. And Elijah and Rosie will be together too, which is equally as nice. I’m happy that we aren’t all seperated and scattered around in four different parts of the state--or even the country! I still don’t know exactly what I want to do in life. I think that I’m pretty set on studying computer science, which I’m excited about, but it does make me nervous to not know exactly what I’ll do with a computer science degree once I graduate. I feel like computer scientists have the reputation of only choosing that profession for the money, but I think I’m choosing it because it’s the only thing that I enjoy AND that I’m good at it.
Well, I guess that’s not totally true. When I was younger I thought that I would be a musician, which maybe is a little bit interesting now that that’s what Violet is going to do. Although, music was always something that we did together as kids. we both learned guitar--we even took lessons together on Thursdays for years--and we thought that we would be a really cool sister musical duo. But I just don’t know if I could ever do music as my career. I love it, but I don’t think that I love it in the same way that Violet does. I think that if music was the thing that I did to make money and make a living, I would stop enjoying it at all. Computers and technology, on the other hand, are things that I feel as if I have a PURPOSE in. I want to learn how to use technology in ways that can help other people. I don’t know for sure what that means, but I hope I can figure it out while I’m in college. And I hope that I keep playing instruments and making music, too. Just because I’m not studying it like Violet is doesn’t mean that I have to give it up. Speaking of music, one of my most favorite moments from this past year was the day I first met Rosanna--it seems absolutely crazy to me that that was just this summer! It feels as if I’ve known her and Elijah forever, and same with Piper, who I really haven’t known for much longer. Piper and I were at the park with Jayne Thomas to watch a concert at the pavillion, and Rosie was there with her mom because the guitarist in the band was a friend of her mother’s. I remember we all went and danced under the trees at the edge of the park even though the band was kind of awful (they were probably just having a bad day!). Anyway, I guess I’m not really sure how to end this--Rosanna, I’m so glad that you asked me to be part of your time capsule, and I hope that in five or ten years from now we’ll all be together and get to read through these journal entries together. I’ll miss you and Elijah so much next year, but I know that all four of us are going to do great things and I can’t wait to spend this summer with all of you., pushing Piper off the docks into the lake and making friendship bracelets in your mom’s shop and getting into a perfectly reasonable amount of trouble all over the island. I love you!!!
Favorite song: Anything (Adrianne Lenker) Go-to outfit: something with flowers! Favorite food: shrimp tacos What do you think you’ll be doing ten years from now?: I hope that I’m running my own business, using technology in a way that helps people!
I’ve never kept a journal before, and honestly, I have no idea what people write about in these things. I, um, don’t really do “words”. I do pictures. But Rosanna says “just write about your day!” but I feel like that will be boring. Actually, it would be like this: today I woke up and ate a banana and a slice of toast for breakfast, and then I went to work and read a Nancy Drew book that Rosie gave me between checking out customers, and then I ate lunch, and then I went home and did schoolwork and went to bed. See? I’m bored even writing it down. So instead I’m going to write about my entire YEAR, because I think that maybe enough interesting things have happened in the past twelve months to fill two pages. Before I met Rosanna and Madelyn this summer, I thought that I was pretty happy with my life, and I didn’t really have any reason to think that my life would change as much as it has in the past months. Honestly, I sort of figured that the rest of my life, at least for the foreseeable future, would look pretty much exactly the same as my life did then. I thought that I would “graduate” from being homeschooled in the spring and just keep working at George’s Grocery--and don’t get me wrong, I love working at George’s Grocery. I really, really do. It’s not that working at a grocery store is particularly exciting, but I love it because I don’t have to be on my feet all day, worrying about things, you know? I like it because it’s not something I have to be overly invested in. When nobody’s in the store I can read behind the counter or draw or whatever I want and nobody cares, because usually it’s just me working. This might sound silly, but after college, I don’t think that I would be too sad if I went right back to working at a job like that. I don’t think that I’m one of those people who could ever have their career be their main defining element of their whole...personhood, or whatever. I like what I do. I like helping people in little ways and I like having free time to spend doing things that make me happy.
I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with wanting to do something you enjoy, even if that something isn’t what other people think your “dream job” should be, you know?
Favorite song: Death with Dignity (Sufjan Stevens) Go-to outfit: jeans and my green sweater Favorite food: Waffles What do you think you’ll be doing ten years from now?: I have absolutely no idea. I hope I’ll still be creating things and that my best friends and Noah are still in my life.
Anyway, this was a very long tangent. What I was saying is that I didn’t think I would be going to college next fall. And honestly? I still don’t know if I’ll like college. But I do know that, thanks to Rosie and our endless conversations about school and the future and everything else, that I should at least take the opportunity while I have it, and besides, I absolutely do not want to live with my grandmother any longer than I have to, and I don’t think I could afford rent on the island on my own, so with all my friends leaving I’d be forced to move elsewhere anyway, and if I’ve got to leave I might as well try something new and go to school. If I’m being honest, it makes me really nervous. I haven’t been to school...ever. And it’s not even the academic aspects that I’m worried about, I’ve always been pretty good at figuring things out, but living off the island for the first time will be so strange. At least I’ll have Rosie there with me to figure it all out! I hope that if I come back and read this entry in the future I’ll think that I was being very silly and that I didn’t have anything to worry about. Everyone else wrote about a favorite memory from our friendship, and none of the three of them would have any trouble guessing what mine is. It’s the holiday party that Rosie had at her house between Christmas and New Years, when we all went outside at night in the cold to build snowmen and make snow angels, and then laid on our backs in the snow and talked until we thought we would start to freeze. I felt like a little kid, and it sort of reminded me that even though sometimes I feel like I had to grow up quickly and suddenly and all at once, that doesn’t mean that I have to BE grown-up all the time. Does that make any sense? I don’t know! What else do I have to end with? As much as I’m nervous to move away, I’m excited about it, too. I’m excited to learn all sorts of new things, and to hopefully take lots and lots of art and English classes. I’m excited to spend the next four years with one of my best friends. Thank you, Rosie. :)
Okay, well, the idea of starting this journal seemed like a really great one until just about now, because blank pages are intimidating, and everyone else has done such a wonderful job on their entries. I may have cried a bit reading them, but I’m the only one that has to know that, because this is the last entry and as soon as I go back and write a little introduction I’m going to go tuck this notebook away in the attic somewhere and write a little reminder on today’s date in the five-year journal I got for Christmas so that I remember to go get it out again someday. What do I have to write about? Let’s see: I’m terrified to start college. I think that I’ve always been terrified of the idea of starting college, first because I had no idea what on earth I would ever want to study that I would both be interested in and would be worth investing the money and time into that it takes to get a degree., and then because I hate change. I mean, I’ve bought the same pair of purple high-top Converse three times in a row now because I just like things to stay the same. But at the same time as all of this, I’m excited to start school, too. I’m excited to share an apartment with Elijah, and to make at least one or two new friends, too. I’m excited to learn about literature and writing and to spend at least four years just reading and creating little stories, and maybe a few not-so-little ones, too. Of course, I’ll miss my family, especially in the winter when it will be hard to come home and visit. I’ll miss Agatha, and I’ll miss going to help in my mom’s store on the weekends. But I just have to remember that there are so many new things out there for me to try and do and experience, and I can’t wait to see what happens. This sounds cheesy--maybe I’, just giving myself a pep talk here!
Okay, then, back to life today. Right now I’m working on a few little poems for school and Piper says that she’ll print my favorite one in the paper, too. She didn’t exactly specify HOW she would be getting the poem printed in the paper, and knowing Piper it will probably be sneakily and without asking permission, probably by removing another one of the identical photos of the sunset over the breakwater complain about it, though.
Favorite song: Home (Gabrielle Aplin) Go-to outfit: A sweater and jeans, and my purple converse Favorite food: Pasta What do you think you’ll be doing ten years from now?: I hope I’ll be doing exactly what I am now: writing fun little stories and poems, and spending time with my best friends. that gets emailed in every week. I simply will not
I was trying to think of a favorite moment or a favorite memory to write about, and I thought of a lot of them, actually, like the day that Piper and Elijah and I all made friendship bracelets, or the time we went looking for beach glass and I found that rock with a hole in the center of it to make a necklace out of. But I think my favorite memory was the time that Elijah and I walked through his old house just before it was being torn down. It seems weird to pick that as a favorite memory, because it was really sad, honestly, but I think that was the day that we really became friends, rather than us both being just Piper’s friends that hung out together sometimes by default, you know? I’ll miss Piper and Maddie next year, and I’ll miss Cedar Island. I’m glad that I got to grow up in a place as special as this one. I know that Piper wrote about wondering if she would be different if she had grown up somewhere else, and I know for me the answer is definitely yes. I would have never had my god-awful summer job at the ferry docks if I lived in most other places, and if I hadn’t had that summer job I wouldn’t have met Piper, and without Piper I wouldn’t have met Madelyn and Elijah and...well, I think that you get the idea. If I hadn’t done any one of those things I wouldn’t be making this journal, and I’d probably be working on some silly time capsule project all by myself. Now I am going to go and finish typing up my silly little poem so I can send it to Piper, and then I think I am going to go and make some spaghetti, and I’m going to try my best to not worry about things that I can’t q do anything about, and I’m going to look forward to this long summer with my best friends in the whole world.