9/17/98 - 2 Lines
9/22/98-1 Line
9/24/98-4 Lines
9/27/98-2 Lines
9/30/98-5 Lines
*10/5/98-14 Lines
11/13/98 - 2 Lines
11/15/98 -2 Lines
11/17/98-10 Lines
11/18/98-2 Lines
11/20/98-4 Lines
11/21/98-2 Lines
11/23/98-1 Line
11/24/98- 1 Line

You get the basic idea.

Now, imagine that this repeats over and over, following near to this date pattern and frequency of line listings. Imagine that it takes up two columns on unlined paper, and that some entries look like this:

:) 1/27/99-11 Lines

And that some entries are circled and say things like this:

*3/17/99 - 82 Lines

And that the list continues until:

6/5/99-17 Lines

High School Self, how long did it take me to look at this piece of paper, carefully folded into Journal #75, and remember that each item (of approximately 250) referred to how many lines in a particular journal entry were devoted to Fred, and that the * meant that you had talked to him, and that the :) meant that you had talked to him and it was positive (there were only two of those), and imagine my horror when I got to the end of the list:

1,750 6.7%

Yes, high school self, you spent what was likely a number of hours to determine that you had written 1,750 lines in your notebooks about Fred, which was a total of 6.7% of actual journal real estate.

And I can gaurantee you that you looked at this piddly number the next day and said to yourself, I'm not obsessed with Fred! I only spend 6.7% of my ink writing about that guy! I'm pretty awesome!

Then maybe the next day, as you may remember doing, high school self, you stopped mentioning him at school and started keeping tick marks on your hand for every time someone ELSE brought it up, because after all, you weren't the one with the obsession!!

Good news, high school self. Now you fill sheets of unlined paper with crazy numbers and dates and symbols, but this time you're trying to arrange your finances and get yourself out of debt, so that makes it at least a little better. Right?

Love, Future Self