Wreck This Journal

I attended a bachelorette party on Friday night. I didn't want to go. It's not because I don't care about the bride, or the hostess, or the other guests. I was just... tired. I know the other toddler Mommies out there can understand. If you have a night off, you sort of want to stay home with your family in your jammies. But, I fixed my make-up, and got on the Metro North, which took me to the 6 train, which took me to the N train, and I arrived at the party, ready to make the most of it. I was handed a drink nearly immediately. OK, that helps... And then, I was handed a book.

"Wreck This Journal."

I didn't understand. It was just a book with a different instruction on each page. And the primary purpose is to wreck the book.

A BOOK. You want me to destroy a BOOK? I care about books. I have always cared about books. I'm writing one, for goodness sake. But I am a good sport, I can do this. Our hostess turned our attention to a page in the middle that said "rip this page out. Throw it away. Accept the loss." And it was kind of... liberating... actually. We spent the whole evening wrecking our books and talking. It's interesting that women have to have busy hands in order to connect. Men can just drink. We need to DO. And so we talked, and we drank, and we threw our books off of the balcony, and we set them on fire, and we tied strings around them and dragged them around the neighborhood. People stared (fortunately I am not shy) and asked what we were doing. We answered that it was a bachelorette party. Somehow, this was accepted as an answer that made sense. Oh, New Yorkers.

The longer the night went on, the more I got it. My inner-perfectionist let go. I got less and less worried about doing something the "right" way. I didn't save pages for when I was in the mood. And the results were all rather artistic. And honest. They were simple tasks, and they gave me an instant feeling of accomplishment.

There is a lot of freedom to be gained from wrecking this journal. I'm about halfway. So here it is. My new category of blogs. Wreck this blog. This could get messy.