My Journal Journey

I haven't had much luck with journals in recent years. I think I've figured out why.

My journal journey began when I was very young - probably around 5 years of age. I wrote cohesively and with pretty good grammar, spelling and penmanship (I have proof!) around this age, which is probably why my mother bought me my very first diary. I remember it well because it still exists, shut in a trunk at my parents' house with my other childhood journals (there must be at least 20). It was silver with a white unicorn on it, and pages in three colors.

This journal is hilarious. I documented my daily escapades, including talking my way out of having to eat a bagel, accompanying my dad to the grocery store, being excited about my new Hello Kitty pencils, making channels and sluices out of the rainwater in the curb, trying to con the neighborhood boys into drinking noxious concoctions of kool-aid and mustard, etc. There "came a day" when I acknowledged "the" existence of quotes - but I "had no idea how to use them" for a "couple" of months. I just wrote what came to mind, never analyzing it, never looking back on it, never thinking about it as anything but a personal amusement.

My middle school journals were more about appearing to be diligent and interesting without actually being so. My handwriting was excellent, but I tended to exaggerate details in hopes that somebody would read it and be impressed. I was also slightly OCD... If I hadn't filled up the last page of my entry, I was likely to repeat a banal adjective over and over again to fill up space. Ex: "It thunderstormed and the water at the pool was very very very very very very very very very very very very very chilly." I've always been terminally sentimental and it definitely comes out in my writing at around this time - I described the places and things I loved in excruciating detail.

My high school journals are probably the most entertaining. It was around this time that I developed true sentience, I think. I was so self-conscious that I always wrote to an audience, even if that theoretical audience was my future discerning and critical self! It's kind of sad to me now, how typically emo and self-centered I was. My concerns usually fell squarely in the "teenage archetypal" category. They remind me that no matter how soulfully and novelly I write, no matter how many times I find myself in awe of my cleverness... In the not-so-distant future, it will seem representative, standard, unexceptional. The most important thing to be is not novel. It's not deep, or complicated, or poignant or innovative or unprecendented. It's to be real. Maybe I'm really cliche sometimes, but at least I'm not falsely provocative.

Still, during years 14-18, even at my most teenagerish, I could sometimes be uncommonly observant. I'm envious of my teenage self's ability to be so completely engrossed in an activity or enthralled with an idea or book that it occupied almost all of my brainspace for a span of time. Doesn't happen much anymore.

Since then, my journals have become increasingly, er... What's a good word? Reflexive. Writing about something, and then thinking about it from various angles and then writing about thinking about it, then getting fed up and deleting it, and then writing something else, ad infinitum. I suffer from "writing bureaucracy." This is when the structure/process becomes more important than the meaning. Maybe the process is the meaning. Maybe I've come full circle and I'm now doing some twisted, drawn-out bastardization of what I did when I was 5; making pretty words to amuse myself and pass the time.

So, I bought a notebook yesterday. I picked it up off the shelf on Sunday while at the bookstore with S and put it back down, only to go back yesterday and buy it. I took it home and resisted the urge to write something down in it, any something. Later, inspiration struck. I wrote in big letters: "Will I ever take my shoes in to get cleaned? NOP." In the evening, S and I had a political conversation over dinner; he had some awesome points. I wrote them down. I wrote the definition for the word "orrery," because I didn't know it. Today I've written down only my boss' home address, because I intend to send her a card to let her know how incredibly awesome she is.

Anything that I would write on a scrap of paper, or scribble in the margins of a magazine, I will write in this book instead. Anything that I might think of and inevitably fail to remember two hours later, I will write in this book instead of losing it forever in that black space between my neurons. Any piece of idiocy (including factual recountings of my daily activities) that I'm sure I'll stick my tongue out at later will go down in that book.

GLERB!