I visited a friend on the local college campus recently. When we stepped out into the cool late-morning air, I was struck by the memories it summoned.

Many college memories center around the start of college, the start of semesters, the start of the school year. Those are often associated with the excitement of the potential ahead of us, wearing sweaters and walking to class among the falling leaves.

But that late morning moment this spring: the humid, hazy look in the sky, the green grass with fresh clippings lightly littering the sidewalk, that odd silence after classes were done for the year as students and teachers readied for exams, summer plans, graduation… where was I when all this was happening to me years ago?

It would be another summer of scraping by selling news photos to the Daily for $3.50 each, trying to make rent, trying to eat cheap, trying to imagine the future of my photography, a career.

It had the smell of loneliness, the smell of failure. When did I devolve from arrogant freshman to lonely senior? How did my bright future turn so dark and dusty?

I could blame guidance councilors and college advisors, but I won’t. I could blame the company I kept, but I won’t. I could blame high school and college curriculums, but I won’t. Parents, friends, enemies, society, academia, nutrition, the threat of nuclear war, television, sugar, fat, salt. None of those.

That pretty much leaves the mirror.

I failed myself. To posit otherwise would be to admit that we aren’t sentient, that we aren’t people.

A tenth grade English teacher once wrote to me, “You. You. You are the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.” At the time, I thought it sounded like nonsense. I was so busy acting like I understood everything, I missed out on actually understanding.

I see myself in that mirror in that ratty rooming house, looking at a dreamer. I dreamed about money, cameras, cars, airplanes. But I didn’t plan. I waited.

In my journal, it became The Summer of Private Drama. By July, I found myself wondering if I meant anything at all. The girl I adored with the Zeta Tau Alpha socks and the hazel eyes had told me off, again.

In my journal, I wrote, “Right now I’ve got fear, pain, and boredom. These are good ones, because they can get so real, so sharp, so clear. I have blurred visions. Blurred by what? The telephone line. Honesty. Your presence. The realness. History. Ghosts. The sky on fire. Silence.”

What was I writing? Why was I writing? I hadn’t been discovered as the next Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus?

Wasn’t that supposed to happen if I wrote in my journal?

Then I wrote, “If I kept a journal for other people… the concept sounds ridiculous. Every night, there is a blank page, just for me. Create an image with words instead of creating an image with suffering.”

That was my turning point. I realized the journal was for me.