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Unexpected payoff
I've kept a journal since second grade. I have dozens at my parents' house in a big box, and at least that many in my apartment in New York. The thing is, I never open them once I'm finished. I don't write to chronicle, I write to get things out. Sometimes, I will start a new journal just to symbolize a fresh start or a new beginning, closing another journal for good, never to revisit those thoughts, feelings or experiences again.
Journals have always had an important place in my life. I carry mine with me at all times. A good chunk of my relationship with Matt in college was spent writing in our journals (or buying new ones -- it was/is a compulsion). We'd hunker down at the diner with a bunch of pens and markers and write and draw without speaking. This could last hours. I had forgotten about this ritual until I came across the journal I kept at that time and cracked it open.
In the past two days, I have read five years of my writing. I can't remember a time when I've done this before, a time when I felt compelled to examine the past in this way. It started innocently enough -- I was searching for a quote that I remembered writing down during my senior year of college. I didn't find the quote, but I did find years of insecurity and anxiety coupled with times of immense happiness and true inspiration.
It was hard -- and enlightening -- to look back like that and see the patterns and paths I've taken in these five years. It also gave me new inspiration. I'm using these journals, these chronicles, to write the novel that I've been wanting to write for years. It won't be a memoir, because I don't really feel that my life is worth one, but it will be, I hope, the most honest thing I've written.
It's funny how looking back could be all it takes to move forward.
Journals have always had an important place in my life. I carry mine with me at all times. A good chunk of my relationship with Matt in college was spent writing in our journals (or buying new ones -- it was/is a compulsion). We'd hunker down at the diner with a bunch of pens and markers and write and draw without speaking. This could last hours. I had forgotten about this ritual until I came across the journal I kept at that time and cracked it open.
In the past two days, I have read five years of my writing. I can't remember a time when I've done this before, a time when I felt compelled to examine the past in this way. It started innocently enough -- I was searching for a quote that I remembered writing down during my senior year of college. I didn't find the quote, but I did find years of insecurity and anxiety coupled with times of immense happiness and true inspiration.
It was hard -- and enlightening -- to look back like that and see the patterns and paths I've taken in these five years. It also gave me new inspiration. I'm using these journals, these chronicles, to write the novel that I've been wanting to write for years. It won't be a memoir, because I don't really feel that my life is worth one, but it will be, I hope, the most honest thing I've written.
It's funny how looking back could be all it takes to move forward.
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