Guest Post: Journal

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This post comes to us from another very old blogger friend, Heather of Grab Shell Dude.  I love her blog because I love the way she thinks and writes, and her blog is a perfect window into her head.

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I go back and read through my old journals sometimes. There is a big shelf of them, in random assortments: one with Winnie the Pooh on the front, and in it the markings of a gel pen from junior high. One with Peter Rabbit that I'm pretty sure I picked up on vacation along with some colored pencils. My first journal, the spine falling apart, filled with my parent's writing and pages of crayon scribbles. There is the journal with no lines and thick, wonderful paper that I wrote on with a calligraphy pen. There are even computer printouts when I decided I would try journaling with a word processor.

Now, I'm slowly working my way through an ordinary, black, lined book, with nothing on the cover. I've written mostly in ballpoint in this one, though my handwriting experiments have been quite extreme: alternating between cursive and print, between neat large letters and tiny curly, and, sometimes, between scribbles and even faster scribbles. I still haven't chosen between cursive and print, though usually my print shows up more. (My normal handwriting hasn't changed, sadly, since sixth grade. I know. I have the journal to prove it.)

For a while, I wrote occasionally. Then I wrote about once a week. Then I was inspired to write everyday. I've done it for around two years now. Sometimes in the evening, but lately, I mostly journal in the morning, when I'm not so tried and I can get some hindsight on the previous day.

Everyday? Really? To some people, this would be a huge, daunting task. For some, they would stare at the blank page and have nothing to write about, or, they would think, nothing interesting.

But I have never come up with a loss of things to write. Sure, there has been the occasion day where I wrote, "Non-eventful." But those have happened very rarely. More common are entries of multiple paragraphs, day after day. What do I have to write about, anyway?

Life, of course. How I feel. What I do. The people around me. My goals and dreams. My struggles. Those secret things that only my journal can understand. Sometimes it's the dark doldrums of discouragement, but most of the time, I try to instead write positively: I can't ignore the hard things of life, but I can see what I am learning from them. I can be honest, and honesty usually leads me to the conclusion that I have been given a lot and that I'm getting better at this whole living thing.