What to do with those childhood dreams?

I wish I could remember who gave me my first journal.

I can remember it clear as day. My brothers and sisters circled the kitchen table, working on their homework. I was three-years-old, maybe four. I had a journal and a pen and the ability to "write" loop after loop after loop.

I said I was doing my homework.

I said I was writing.

I wanted to be like them.

I wanted to be a true original.

That journal book is lost, and hardly missed. I started writing in journals, in earnest, on July 9. 1990.

I bought a fabric covered journal at The Bookmark, the bookstore at Gustavus Adolphus, while I was at the St. Peter campus for writing camp. It was the summer before twelfth grade and I defined myself by my ability to write. I filled those pages, and pages of many more similar books for years.

I wrote about what made me happy, what made me angry, what made me sad. I wrote about first loves and college stress and arguments and friends getting pregnant, sisters coming to visit, holidays, I wrote about all of it.

Then, one day, I didn't.

Columns, editorials, articles, blogs, newsletters, Tweets, web copy, e-blasts and status updates have filled the gap, satiated my thirst to get it all out. Somehow I went from needing to write for only myself (No one has ever been invited to read my journals.) and to write for anyone curious enough to spend the time inhaling my words.

But here I am, with this stack of books, nearly 20 in all. Books I filled with every thought, feeling, hope and dream of my young life and I'm contemplating throwing them away. But what else to do with them? Do we toss it all away and immerse ourselves in the new way of self expression? Do we stick them in a closet to take up space? Do we dare share our words of youth?