I remember my first diary. I'm pretty sure one of my grandmother's gave it to me. It had blue, lined pages, a hardcover, and most importantly, A LOCK and KEY!
I wish I'd hung onto to it so that I could see what my seven-year-old self was thinking and worrying about.
Over the years I've kept journals of sorts.
Sometimes it reads like a list of never-met goals: lose weight, write more, be a better person, practice patience.
Sometimes it's a collection of rants about how crappy I think my life is on any given day. (When looking back at old entries, I berate myself for being a drama queen.)
Sometimes it's a giant To Do list: Clean the bathroom, vacuum, run, bathe the dog.
Sometimes it's a log of "brilliant ideas". "Doomsday is coming" from Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman was scrawled across more than one page in my journal. It was also underlined. Boxed. And starred....back when I had no idea what it meant, lol.
Last year, I used The Life Organizer by Jennifer Louden to guide my journalling.
In December I thumbed through a few old journals before throwing them out. (Yes, I threw them out....maybe not the best choice, but I felt like they were giant psychic weights holding me back.)
Basically I figured out the only way to stop whining about a problem/challenge is to either decide it's really not a problem/challenge or to do something differently.
This year I'm doing a lot of things differently. Like making my goals public and blogging about my progress....it's a new "journal" of sorts.
Tell me Killer Friends: Do you journal/keep a diary? When did you start? What do you record in it? Do you go back and learn from your old entries?
7 comments:
I kept journals in high school - oh, the angst! Can't bear to read them now. I figure if I'm ever infamous they'll be worth money.
Ha - I love Clarice's attitude about her journals being worth money :)
Journal keeping has been with me since I, too, had the lock and key journal back in elementary school. Yes, I still have it. Yes, I was as angsty as I am now (maybe a little less then, maybe). I have all my journals and have made my husband promise to burn them if anything ever happens to me (I know him, he'll never read them - but if they got into the wrong hands...).
Now, I keep an online journal (the blog) and a running journal (one page for running info/data/miles/etc for the week - and the opposite page for any angst that can't go online - the running helps to lessen the amount of angst I have).
OK, more than anyone needs to know. Great post, JB!
Great post! I got my first diary back in... 2nd grade, I think. It was lame. "Went to school. Had fun. Came home." Every entry was like that - not that there were many entries. When I got way older, I started keeping what I called a memory journal (because I lost contact with so many of my memories after the accident). Whenever I'd remember some event I'd thought I lost, I'd write it down so I'd never forget it again. Other than that, though, I was never really a journal person.
I mean, sure, I keep notebooks filled with my writing - and sometimes filled with me talking to myself about my writing. It has weird notes jotted in the margins. But I don't think of those as journals.
I never thought about blogging as a type of journal. Thanks for pointing that out, Janet. So, yeah, I guess I do journal now after all. ;o)
Clarice -- LOL, great plan!
Janet -- I'm still angst too. I keep a running journal too....I learn a lot more from that than my regular journals.
B.E. -- I was in second grade too, but I'm pretty sure I never wrote "Went to school. Had fun."
Someone gave me a diary with a lock for a birthday present. I found it when I came home from college one summer and my mother insisted I clean out my closet. The key was still taped to the back cover. I'd never opened it or written in it. I kept a journal in high school and college, mostly filled with bad poetry angsting about life, love, and other stupid stuff. When I was pregnant, I kept one of my thoughts and various memories that I thought I'd share with my child when she was all grown up. Yeah...about that... *rolls eyes*
Now I keep an idea journal or four. I have one in just about every room and my purse. Just in case. I have notes about WIPs and future projects. I have sentences unrelated to anything. I have song titles. I have...OMG! I just flipped back through one and read a snippet between two characters I HAVE to use in a future book...
And now I'll have to set aside some time to read through all of them and add to my sticky-note crazy quilt on my writing board. *sigh*
Good topic today, JB!
I'm thinking the 'went to school' and the 'had fun' were two different incidences. ;o)
Silver -- I hope you unearth some treasures!
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