I've been an avid journaler for most of my life. I grew up in the Judy Blume era, devouring first-person accounts of teenage femininity. I yearned to set my thoughts to the page and pour out my heart like Margaret in her prayers.
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| 32 years of journals |
Sometimes, I fancied myself a poet (and apparently had a rather dark imagination as a nine-year-old).
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| Classic composition notebook--an excellent way to begin the journaling lifestyle. |
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| Eat your heart out, Sylvia Plath |
I even had one of those diaries with the little lock on it so that I could keep prying eyes away from my most secret admissions (though I dispensed with the tiny prescribed date format pretty shortly--I needed at
least a page to pen my adolescent thoughts each day.)
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| 1990--the most awkward of years: middle school |
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| note how I apologize TO the diary for not writing in it... |
As a young teen, our town library published a turn-of-the century journal that had been kept by a local girl throughout her youth. The book was titled
"An Account of My Life" and it chronicled the daily adventures of a girl whose struggles and achievements felt surprisingly relatable, considering our lives were 100 years apart. What struck me as most interesting was how much her writing developed and matured over the years as she became a young woman. I'm sure her English teachers played a role in this, but the act of writing regularly, even casually, even to oneself, is a surefire way to become a better writer. So, in the interest of being a better writer, I wrote. A lot.
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| 1994: My sophomore year of high school |
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I love how I A: introduce myself and B: pretend I don't know what to do with a journal, as if I hadn't filled up two of them by this point. This is the first of many times that I will refer to my diary as my "empty book".
This one, from 1995, was my journal while attending a 5-week performing arts camp in Connecticut called "Center for Creative Youth" (CCY)
Oh, child. You've only begun to scratch the surface. |
It was at about this time that I began to wonder if, one day, my empty books might be read by another person (and yes, I realize that if you're reading this blog post, I'm basically making that little fantasy come true...but believe me when I say these pages are VERY cherry-picked. Most of my entries are either horribly boring or embarrassingly overshare-y). My daily writing surged in the anticipation that long after my demise, some young impressionable reader might learn about our history through my records.
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| This is a journal I made by hand, and is the one I took with me to France in college when I spent a semester abroad. |
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| I guess I fancied myself a travel writer. |
I journaled prolifically the most through my late teens and twenties, in the period when the internet had just been born, those innocent years right before social media had taken hold. I wrote about my travels, tragedies, and dreams, both literal and figurative.
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| 2002: This was the journal I had when I was married, the year my father broke his neck, paralyzing him permanently. |
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| My father is currently living his golden years as the salty but lovable curmudgeon he's always been. He is still extremely paralyzed, but his opinions are as strong as ever. |
2005: This bejeweled beauty was a handcrafted gift. I loved the spiral binding, as it allowed me to write most naturally.
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| It's amazing how little has changed. I still struggle to find solitude and wonder when I'll feel in control of my life. |
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| 2006: Living in NYC, running a children's theatre company and learning the true meaning of entrepreneurship. |
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| I became so accustomed to anxiety, I didn't know how to function when it had gone missing. I'm still working on this. |
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| 2008: the year my health first started forcing me to re-assess my priorities. Post herniated disc, pre-surgery. |
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| Still worried about my weight, even though I could barely walk or sleep through the night. |
It was about this time that MySpace was falling by the wayside (leaving poor Friendster in its dust) and Facebook opened its doors to non-Harvard plebeians like myself. Twitter had been around for 2 years and was gaining steam. I kept journaling, but slightly less. Why should I cramp my hand up toiling away day after day in my paper journals, when I could just tap out 140 characters and reach an audience right away? I didn't have to wait for postmortem fame--people would read what I wrote right away!
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| 2016 -- my journaling had become much less frequent |
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| Again, my health was occupying much of my brainspace. |
Each time I picked up my book to write, I would admonish myself for my delinquency in journaling. I got caught up in the daily grind. In the brief moments when I did decide to write, each entry started the same way: "It's been so long since I've written in this book." I wondered why I was bothering; I had experienced a bit of somewhat semiprofessional writing success, as a self-produced playwright and occasional web reviewer of local theatre. I was blogging and posting on social media. I had found a bit of an audience, and I didn't feel the pull to journal as much. After all, what's the point in writing to no one? And so, my journaling continued to wane until...
This past year, as I began to process some Big Life Decisions (because why keep things simple?), and as I spent more and more time in mindful practices, I decided to take some time to actually read my old journals. I pulled them all out from the bookshelves and started poring over them, one by one, remarking how much I had grown and how little I had changed. I've gone through countless professions and years of schooling. I've changed hairstyles, hobbies, and dreams again and again. And yet, I kept seeing the same themes: I still worry about my weight. I still seek outside approval and deal with feelings of imposter syndrome. I still love doing yoga (and have to remind myself to do it). I still get anxious (particularly when I'm feeling calm--something MUST be wrong if I'm calm!) and the theme of health and family are always present. I needed to read these things about myself, by myself, to really appreciate how far I've come and how much I still need to work on my own growth.
This is when I realized that my audience is me. It's always been me. It was me from the beginning and it will be me until I can no longer read or write. I'm the best at knowing what I want and knowing how I should go about getting it, in spite of what advertisers would have me believe. These days, we outsource everything--we hire professionals to pluck our eyebrows, paint our nails, rub our backs, and cook our food. We look to the internet to answer any and every question we have; we seek advice from hundreds of 'friends' and 'followers' on our social media platforms. Targeted commercials tell us what we should purchase and consume. We turn to the "Hivemind" any time we want a good place for lunch, a dentist, or the solution to our latest existential crisis. We're losing touch with ourselves, and we're losing our ability to make our own decisions and take care of our own needs.
By reading my old journals, I realized that the answers to my most pressing questions, the ones that really matter, from "how will I survive the next four weeks?" to "what am I going to do for my next career?" are all in my own little singular mind. The hive is noisy; the buzzing distracts you from your thoughts. Writing silences the buzz and focuses you on your true self. THAT is how the journal works. It gives you a space to ask and answer your own questions.
This past January, I made two new year's resolutions: 1--do at least 15 minutes of yoga every day, no excuses. 2--journal every day, no excuses.
I'm only halfway through March, and I'm already pleased that I made these two resolutions. I still love the internet (oh hi I write a blog) and I'm not quitting social media anytime soon (my cats are the cutest #catsofinstagram), but I've gained a newfound appreciation for personal reflection. My letters to myself, upon re-reading, have given me pause to laugh, cringe, and ponder.
And some pages, like this 2007 entry in a simple spiral-bound notebook (literally labeled 'notebook') I wrote as part of the program "The Artists' Way" (which I'm considering reprising, now that I'm older and less wise), make me genuinely grateful to myself that I ever wrote journals and kept them for later re-reading. It's amazing how much more clever I was twelve years ago than I am now.
Un-hive your mind. Look inside. Write down your thoughts. Read them. Write some more. Read them some more.
To quote Oscar Wilde: "I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."
