The summer of 1964 wasn’t just the start of my Grandpa’s adult life - it was the start of a journey, both literal and lifelong. At 23, he packed up in Washington D.C. and drove west, all the way to Los Angeles. What began on that drive wasn’t just a new chapter, but the first page of what would become a daily ritual: one journal entry, every day, on a yellow legal pad. I’ve grown up watching my Grandpa scribble in those journals, always in his fast, looping cursive. No one’s allowed to read them - partly because they’re practically illegible, and partly because they’re rightfully private. The other week, while visiting my family in Atlanta, I stopped by my grandparents’ storage unit. Among dusty boxes and stacked crates, we found ourselves surrounded by decades of his journals - sixty-one years of thoughts, memories, and moments. For the first time, my Grandpa read to me the very first entry: his reflections on that drive from D.C. to L.A., full of nerves, hope, and the sense that something big was beginning. To think of a life so thoroughly recorded is humbling. One could only hope to live a life with that much to say - and the discipline to write it all down.