pages and pockets: playtime with my inner child

i owned this book as a kid (probably around age 10, the copyright date is 1995 when i would have been 9 years old). i was obsessed with diaries, scrapbooks and journals, but i never finished any of them – either i would be way too precious with the book to even start filling it out, or i would start and not keep it up, or become embarrassed by my work, or think my work was not good enough, and rip it out and throw it away. (it wasn't until high school that i filled an entire journal, and it wasn't until college that i stopped throwing away pages that embarrassed me)

(learning to keep a journal is a process)

in 2021, i put together a christmas gift for my friend robin that was meant to nurture her inner child. it included lip smackers and glitter crayons and stick-on earrings, and a copy of this book. i got one for me too – at the time, we were doing weekly video chats together, and i thought it would be fun to hang out with each other's inner children.

since i bought these secondhand (it seems to be out of print), her copy had a few pages filled in, while mine was missing a bunch of pages – apparently the previous owner had the same problem as i did.

my fav art medium these days is collage, so that's what i'm mostly doing to fill the book. the bonus is that this method allows me to cover prompts that are irrelevant (such as "how much allowance do you get?" – i didn't even really get an allowance as a kid..) and the irony is that this method would've been a great way for me to hide the "mistakes" i made filling it out when i was little.