Notes from my younger self

Why journals are basically time machines

Earlier this year, I asked my mom if she could send me some of my old journals that I had in one of the many boxes stored in my parents’ garage.

“How will I find it amid the hundreds of boxes you have here?” She antagonizes me every time I ask her to find something for me. And rightly so.

They have multiplied over the years, reproducing without my permission. What started as a temporary storage situation while I was on my gap year in 2010 turned into a somewhat permanent solution that has meant my parent’s aren’t going to be parking a car in their garage anytime soon (although some might argue this has very little to do with the Home Depot containers labeled “Laura’s stuff” that dominate the back wall).

Each time I ask my mom to send me something from the garage, I get an entire box full of things that I didn’t realize were still being stored there. This time was no different.

Now, in addition to adding 10 notebooks to my bookshelf, I have also added a small brass Buddha statue from Thailand, a blown glass fern frond from New Zealand, and all of the ceramic painted skulls that I bought while living in Mexico.

I kept meticulous journals during my years of living abroad, especially those early months of arriving somewhere new or whenever I quit my job and traveled full-time. I have at least one journal for every year starting in 2010, plus the journal I kept during my semester of studying abroad, when Luke and I met. That journal is how we chose our “anniversary.” I wrote about our first date in it, a day trip to a town called Rorschach on October 3, 2008.

I knew I would want to read back through these journals as I got older, use them as a reminder of who I once was. And while it’s only been 15 years, boy, am I enjoying reading about my younger self. She was so brave, so naive, so excitable, so awed by the world. We have the last two in common still, I think.

I’ve been reading about my trip to Bali this week. It was an unintentional trip, but one that would have enormous ripple effects on my life.

Who are these two INFANTS exploring Bali?!

In 2012, I applied for a new visa while living in Australia. I was on the Working Holiday visa for my first year, and in order to stay for a second year, I planned on taking a course at a local college and moving onto a student visa. I applied for a program, was accepted, and then sent my application to the government to move on to this other visa, all from the comfort of my Sydney apartment.

One afternoon on my way to work, Luke called to tell me that my visa had been denied. I called in sick and ran home to find out if I was a felon, if I would forever have to claim that I was denied entry to a country, and if I was now illegally in Australia.

It turns out, at least at the time, Americans could not change their visa status while inside the country. I would have to leave Australia and apply again.

Sounded simple enough. So I looked at the nearest and cheapest place I could go from Sydney, which led me to booking a trip to Bali.

My first reaction to what I wrote in this journal is how much awe I experienced on this trip. Bali was the first place I had ever been that was truly unlike home. New Zealand and Australia were certainly different in their own ways: meat pies and budgie smugglers, Christmas in the middle of summer, and always being called by some nickname that was usually longer than my actual name. But, for the most part, the language was the same, and so much of the culture was easily understood because it was similar to my own.

It wasn’t until I got to Bali that I experienced true culture shock for the very first time in my life.

There is part of this naïveté that I’m glad I have outgrown - the way that I talked about the Balinese people in these journal entries is fraught with cliché; hardworking, kind, generous, happy with so little. I cringe at young me and her inability to see through the kindness of capitalism, the generalizations of an entire nation based on the few service workers that I met, thinking that there was somehow peace in their poverty.

But I also smile at so much of the firsts. The first time I went to a night market was in Bali. The first time I drank the water out of a freshly cut coconut was in Bali (I did not like it). The first time I took a cooking class, saw a sea turtle in the wild, or made friends with a bartender who later became our tour guide was on this trip to Bali. The first time I ate street food, the first time I ate strange food, the first time I watched a sunset sitting in a beanbag chair on the beach with a beer, and the first time I almost pooped my pants were all in Bali.

I booked a hotel transfer from the airport before I arrived because I was so nervous about how I would get to the hotel. I ate at the same restaurant the first two nights I was there because it was a 2-minute walk from the hotel, and there were no sidewalks on the street, and all of the cars and bikes were honking at me. I booked all of our tours and taxis for those first few days through the hotel because it was easier.

Now, give me a little grace. It was 2012. I didn’t have a smartphone or blogs or ChatGPT to tell me how to do things. All I had was a Bali Lonely Planet that I had taken out of the Sydney library (thankfully, my visa was granted, so I could return it, but I felt like such a rebel taking it out of the country without knowing for sure!).

I was only 24 years old, and although I pretended to be big and brave about travel, I was an absolute wimp from the moment I arrived in Bali until about day four, when I realized there was nothing to be afraid of and no one was going to run me over in the street (at least not intentionally).

Ready for my first-ever cooking class!

By the end of the trip, I was frequenting all the night markets, eating at local warungs, and walking the tightrope of concrete between the rice fields and the road like a pro. I was hailing Bluebird taxis, negotiating prices for yet another sarong that I absolutely had to have at the local shops, and covering my sunburnt back with Bintang t-shirts like every other backpacker on the island.

After three weeks of adventure, I headed back to Australia, visa in hand, but hungry to get back to this continent. It would take a year and a half, but eventually I would pack up a few suitcases (leaving the rest in my parents’ garage, of course) and move to Asia. I credit this trip to Bali with giving me that spark, with giving me that confidence, with showing me what was on the other side of my comfort zone.