Project Themoir: The Beginning

Krystal & Kate- If one selfie is good, four must be GREAT!

Krystal: Ah yes, the beginning. Anyone who knows me can confirm this as fact: I don’t tell a short story, nor do I always tell an entirely true one. Sometimes, only sometimes, I embellish. This doesn’t make me a liar, but I guess I am what some might call- an unreliable narrator. But don’t fret, you can trust Kate. Her word is truth. I swear.

One might ask us, “Krystal and Kate, why are you writing a blog? Haven’t you tried this before?” The answer, for me, begins when I was four. Allow me to regale you with the details- most of them are irrelevant, but then, I already told you I don’t know how to keep it short, and I honestly love writing about the topics of “me” and “us”.

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I have been writing for as long as I can remember. I started when I was in preschool at The Crayon Connection in Concord, NH; I’d scrawl stories about the most mundane topics on that sickly beige paper with the solid blue lines and the little red dashes (or is it the other way around?) ...Pause please while I Google Image the paper of which I am speaking; accuracy matters in these things.

...Back with inconclusive results. Apparently, no one thought to take pictures of preschool handwriting paper back in 1988, and if they did, they didn’t feel compelled to upload it onto the Internet in 2013. 

Anywhosy, as I was typing, I have always had a love of words. Reading was my first passion, but as soon as I was able to hold my pencil correctly, I was scribbling nearly illegible words of my own across the page. Ponies, princesses, real life people, all topics were relevant and fodder for my stories. During my kindergarten year, my teacher Mrs. Donovan, one of my favorite characters from my elementary school days, worried about my sight and fine motor skills. When I wrote, no matter what the story was about,  all of my words flowed together with no distinction between the end of one and the beginning of the other.

Having told me time and time again to space my words carefully, Mrs. Donovan suggested having my eyes tested in case I perhaps suffered from some horrific sight deficiency. Upon testing, I was diagnosed with shockingly perfect vision (It wasn’t until several years later that my sight decided to shit the bed). With my eyes cleared of all blame, my patient, angel of a teacher decided to teach me a trick, and by trick I mean she forced me to put my dirty little index finger down between each word to ensure adequate spacing.

In addition to the fact that it was highly embarrassing, I distinctly recall thinking to myself, “Who has time for this?!”  What she didn’t realize was that I had no time for spaces or finger tricks-I had ideas a-flowing. Words were flying through my brain, and I had to get them onto paper as fast as I could. I was convinced, even at that young age, that I was going to write the next Noisy Nora or Blueberries for Sal (my personal favorites at the time).

Years have passed (nearly 25 in fact...I’m chasing 30 like a run away dog!!) and I managed to figure out how to write quickly (thank you, computers!) and space my words correctly (tap the space-bar and voila!) I have never run short of ideas. What I have run short on in self-confidence and at times, motivation. Thankfully, I met Kate.

...Hmmm...I don’t think I answered the hypothetical question that one might ask us upon hearing we started a blog. Kate, can you take this one?

Thanks pal.

Kate: Unlike Krystal, I am not going to start from the from the first time I picked up a writing utensil; after all, I am five years older, so we could be looking at a significantly longer background story. I’ll spare you the details and skip to the good part.

Some of you may remember a little blog called “The High Five Herald” that Krystal and I started writing in the early days of our friendship. It was a blog about the highs and lows (mostly lows) of our dating experiences at the time. We had a blast collaborating and writing together, but sadly we realized that continuing to write about our pathetic love lives was not sending the right message to the Universe, so we said goodbye to “The High Five Herald” - not that it changed the dating situation much...

Back to the point: Over the last 5 years, we have had a lot of ideas for other writing ventures that never came to fruition; we even tried our own solo projects, but without each other to hold one another accountable to keep writing, they fizzled out. FYI, Krystal may have been inspired to continue with a genius blog she started, “Fatter, Poor, Almost 30.” 

Krystal: I was! Check that business out here. 

Kate: I approached Krystal with the idea again to start a blog.  I just have this feeling that we were meant to do a creative project together.  We are best friends with different points of view and writing voices. We experience 99% of our lives together being roommates, working in the same school, and sharing the same core group of friends. Why not write a blog about our lives from both perspectives? And hence, the idea of the Themoir was born.

Krystal: After re-reading my diatribe, I realize that my story was long-winded and off topic (shocking). When I asked Kate if it worked, her response was, “It’s funny.” You can blame her for the fact that I truly believe I am hysterical and fail to censor or revise my work even when knowingly off-base. All joking aside, our hope is that we can produce a joint work that is both funny and insightful. We hope that our words will make you laugh and think- maybe run out and buy a book or download a new song you hadn’t heard of. Maybe, you’ll even start writing yourself. There can never be too many words in the world.  

Kate: We are constantly telling our students to do what they love, follow their passion, and take risks. We thought we’d follow our own advice and do the same. New year, new beginnings, new adventures.

“I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.” - Oprah (Krystal: Classic Kate…)