On Journaling

I haven’t written in my journal for the past twenty days or so. Out of habit I have been taking notes in my phone. This tends to happen when I’m away from my journal since I don’t carry it with me when traveling or when I’m away from home in general.

The way that I have been journaling started during the pandemic. After a few weeks of scooting around the house I realized that I had lost track of time and didn’t know what day of the week it was. Previously I had relied on my phone and the many pictures I had taken to keep track of things day to day. Since that wasn’t happening during the pandemic I started jotting down daily events and feelings. “Read in the sun” <Insert movie I watched here> and so on.

Once the world started opening up again I started tracking my shifts and what I did in between breaks if the day called for it. This came in handy when I had to file a report against some supervisors that ultimately didn’t lead anywhere.

My journal of choice has been the Field Notes 56 Week Planner. Well-designed and relatively easy to carry. Within its pages I’ve been scratching out daily recaps and marking major events with asterisks or brightly colored pens. I used a space pen for most of the time since writing slowly kept me from getting too frantic when recounting the day as I would do this shortly before bed.

This went on for about a year and half after world reopened. When a low point struck me in the form of workplace malaise and the ending of a significant talking stage (I speak in euphemisms here since I’m still wrestling with what happened and I’ve reclaimed a sense of self through careful word choice - even in my daily log I simply put “<Redacted> needs space”) After years of workplace frustrations I broke and after dragging my feet for years I decided to attend a session of workplace provided help. This was by no means a replacement for actual therapy but it was a step. For me, diving into my feelings headfirst required another person to listen and the three sessions I had over a few months helped immensely.

During the first session I caught myself editing my phrasing since I wasn’t in the best frame of mind. I also caught myself second guessing my own perspective and did my best to pull myself out of my own self inflicted nose dive. From there I picked up another journal and started writing down thoughts in more constructive ways.

I cracked open the packaging on my Pitch Black (like my mood) notebooks. The first entries were doctor’s note scrawling recaps of my meetings with the specialist so I wouldn’t forget what was said. When I had time to reread them I would process things better when I wrote their statements down word for word. From there the notes turned into longer journal entries, often when I was tired and dejected before going to sleep for the night. Most entries I won’t duplicate here since they were rambling and I now look back on them with a pinch of embarrassment since many of the obstacles I have moved past. I tried to speak plainly, since I have a tendency to write in a flowery manner that gives far too much importance to mundane things. Another habit I fell back on was, in my opinion, one of my weakest writing habits. Vagueness. Events that felt world ending feel silly reading them back later when even after looked back at the date couldn’t figure out what I was feeling so low about. One such entry started simply with “There is an abundance of tears tonight…”

I’ve been tempted to take a silver sharpie and write “The Emo Year” across the cover.

My final entry in this notebook was optimistic. I had recently been hired at a new job and was looking to leave a lot of the pain, both self-inflicted and otherwise, in the past. Another notebook was opened and I continued writing, this time with more focused introspection and cleaner penmanship.

…

Now I find myself nearly a year later, with nearly twenty days of tracked but not written down entries for the daily log I had been keeping. Ending this felt too dramatic, especially considering it covered the end of 2024, easily one of the most exciting years of my life. However, I find myself considering the possibility of stopping the daily log. I’m not sure what I’d replace it with. Do I move back to the daily microblogging I once did in high school? Dusting off a blogger.com and going from there? Do I even need to log what I do day to day?

Perhaps as if the universe lined up just right this post from Joe Rohde popped up on my feed with the following sentiment:

If you have not started yet, start now keeping a journal of these times. Go back to the day before it burnt. Write everything you can recall before you forget.

Trivial things, things that do not foreshadow the destruction that followed, things that do, premonitions, coincidences. Then, the first impressions and actions of the fire and then the heart of the fire, then keep doing it. Do it until someday perhaps more than a year from now, it seems like the event is settling back into life.

Read Samuel Pepys as an example. He wrote about what he ate, who he met, who he had sex with, important stuff and stupid stuff, just diary stuff.

And now we pick over his writings for insights and clues to a vanished time, thanking God and fate that he wrote and that those writings survive.

This time of shock and sorrow will vanish as even the worst times do. And not only you, but we, all of us, will want to remember not just the sweeping epic covered by the press, but the thousands of microcosms of human experience that this fire will transform. So write.

Write where it cannot be erased. Keep it, whether you share it or not. Time is thoughtless and will sweep this all away. It is only we who live who have the power to remember. And no matter what you think...you won't... unless you write. (Or maybe record ;)

Granted this was specifically about the recent fires that are still burning as I type this but it brought up a good point. I should keep writing. Whether or not what I write will ever be pored over matters not. Maybe someday I’ll be the one to pore over it if it’s good enough, thankful that I took the time to do so.