Have you ever kept a journal?

I’ve got 15ish years with various incarnations. My first was a LiveJournal created in the dying light of the 90’s. It birthed a few friendships/pen-pals and lasted a few years before I nuked it. I don’t remember what I posted, but I’m confident it was properly self-absorbed, poorly written, and vapid.

I concluded that the public nature of LiveJournal was a problem and decided to kick it Doogie Howser style. Using the “.LOG” function in Microsoft Notepad, for four+ years I memorialized my histrionic thoughts. Buried at the bottom of a box at my parents, in the rubble of all my x-country moves, is a CD-R w/the files. It’s been 7ish years since I’ve seen them and I’m incredibly curious of what I’ve written. One thing I know is in there: weeks and weeks of entries about the first girl to break my heart (umm…kind of mortified to read those). Next week when I head back for Christmas, I’ll poke around and see if I can find those files. Because, after all, there’s nothing like reading something, only to find the author utterly foolish, petulant, and unsympathetic.

I have terrible handwriting. Still, I was carried away by the romantic idea of journaling in a moleskin. Over the course of a decade I’ve nearly finished filling two editions. Some weeks feature multiple entries, while other periods have gaps of multiple seasons or even just a single entry for a year. Some of my most painful memories are in those books. The writing so visceral, it feels like blood on a page. When I’m nostalgic and foolish enough to look back, I might only get to read a sentence or two before I have to put it away.

Since June I’ve been using a journal for the Mac & iPhone called DayOne. I adore it and have been writing almost daily. This has been my most regular period of journaling since summer of ’02.

My journaling has totally been worth it. It’s how I make sense of the jumbles of feelings in my mess of a head. It’s how I call bullshit on my self. I like to think that I’ve evolved so much. That, over the years, I’m so much more sophisticated, smarter, and world-ready. Yet wading back into the journals always dispels this idea. So much repeats: tone, sentiment, struggles, joys. I don’t like to think of myself as predictable, but the truth is on the page. Often in really shitty handwriting.

Note: This was the first note I sent out to my email list in 2014. Subscribe here.