Chapter 1: Time Machine

April 2, 2026

The first entry in a new journal always feels significant somehow. Putting pen to paper is like meeting a new person whom I expect to spend a lot of time with. In some ways, that is true.

Maybe that person is a future me. Maybe it is a future reader — tomorrow or ten years from now. The time of writing is essential, yet timeless. The events are set in place and time, but universal. We’ll share all that.

The cover of a new journal is influential, too. It is a book, after all. And because the cover is made before the book is begun… it makes me wonder about the relationship between books and covers. Will the cover of this journal influence what goes into it? Sometimes it does.

For that reason, I tend to stock up on the most ordinary composition books to write in, and avoid buying beautiful journals — not that I succeed in avoiding buying them, because gorgeous or otherwise, very fine journals are SO tempting, but then it feels to me like something equally significant or gorgeous should be placed inside. No, instead, you are likely to find a few moments of lovely mooning over a sunset or a scenic river. Aside from that the writing may be no more miraculous than a photo of my take-out meal. The boring covers don’t offer or ask anything of me, so I forget them and write more freely.

But this journal is different. I made this journal, and I made it for you — the same kind of unknown and partly known person who may find an old journal and decipher a passage or two — as if a manuscript abandoned in a cave. (As likely to be a grocery list as good poetry or prose.) It is the finding that makes this journal special. Not because it is less likely to get lost in a cave, being virtual, but because it fills me with a nervous excitement I haven’t felt in some time — the kind of excitement like when I was a kid and found out I should expect a new sister to arrive soon — nervous wondering how this will all turn out, but with an overwhelming feeling that it will be a wonderful journey to meet you.

This journal is like a letter, in a way. It is nice to meet you, I am sure. The beauty of the written word is that we can pick it up and meet any time, like swimming in the same river our grandmother did as a child.

I hope we do share some stories, words, ideas together.

Since it’s my journal, maybe I’ll do all the writing, but expect not. I expect our interactions will affect what goes into these words. They already have. Again the beauty of writing: you are not here now as I type, but you are here now as my voice speaks to you. Isn’t that miraculous? Time is relative, isn’t it?

How exciting! Please, do write back. This is the first time, ever, that I’ve written an interactive journal, and you are part of it. You have your own surface below to write in and send to me. Like Pen Pals. Like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure. Like Time Travel.

Welcome, Christabel

Chapter 2

April 3, 2026

testing the right-hand column

Chapter 3

April 4, 2026

testing another column, this should be left