Does anyone else find comfort and maybe inspiration in keeping a journal? Journalism has been a method of expression almost since the dawn of written expression in humans. I've also come to find that it is extremely useful for keeping my love of writing alive while I battle writers block in my stories. It has currently been over a month since I was able to work productively at all on my story, "The Artemis Recovery." Mostly, I believe, it's because I'm going through a time in my life where my emotions aren't exactly meshing with those that I want conveyed in the story. I've also freshly started college and between a full work schedule and school, there is very little time for me to sit and concentrate completely on writing a very detailed story.
I've been journaling now for a couple of years and for various reasons. I find it's a reliable way to catalog my experiences and to vent my emotions without having to deal with the person-to-person element of venting. It allows me to look back after certain lengths of time to review what may have been going on and if my perceptions of an event has changed. This, believe it or not, has actually come to help me not only grow as a person who is self-aware but also to influence my writing in respects of taking real experiences and emotions and slipping them into my writing. I've also found that maybe, one day, my experiences in life could probably make a good memoir. Who's to say.
My first genuine journal was a product of my (thus far) only long term boyfriend leaving for basic training in the late-summer-early fall of 2010. Before that point, I had tried using journals but had never really put myself into the experiment fully enough to see if I liked writing journals at all. I had had a small journal already lying around and figured, why not? While he was gone, I wrote him letters and wrote in this journal documenting how my days went and how I felt about him and our relationship. It was a no-holds barred way of me communicating what I felt about our relationship and about him. Even though it wasn't always pretty, it ended up being very constructive for us both. When he finished training, I gave it to him and let him keep it. Our relationship did eventually fall apart (he found other people, I found a different path) but the experience of journal writing stayed with me.
My second genuine journaling experience started in roughly 2012, around the end of Junior year and the start of Senior year of high school. I bought a big faux-leather journal and insisted on writing in it every day. It helped immensely with a highly stressful time in my life that I was going through, and has served to be a way of releasing a lot of negativity in my life without creating conflict in my relationships - at least no more than was already there. I've taped movie tickets in and written about dates and fun times that I've had as well as general experiences about high school and growing up in my closing years of high school that I find are helpful when I've done an emotional lock-out. I use these pieces that I've written to bolster some of my writing, as well as for self-assessment. I'm still writing in this particular journal and it's proving to be a great resource.
Newest Journal: I'm back where I started. My newest relationship has taken it's longest distance ever and my significant other is overseas. I'm writing a journal for him to read when he comes back, and like the original attempt at this, it will be for him to keep so long as he wants it. Unlike my other journals however, this will not so much be written as a series of letters or memoirs to myself so much as written as a series of letters to him. While I'm still going to be sending him care packages and letters galore (as well as making contact with him over the internet) these will be in depth insights into what I may not be saying to him at first. This is not because I don't want him to know - but because I do not under any circumstances want to distract him from his work. It could be the worst thing I could ever do to him while he's over there. I write to him when I can't talk to him and to keep myself occupied when there are dull moments in my day or in my classes. It gives me something to do when I can't sleep. He and I even have a running list of things we want to do, songs we want to jam out to, and places we want to visit together. He even asks that specific thoughts I have be tagged in the journal for him to read more about later.
Writing journals is very classic method of recording one's thoughts, as well as giving others an insight into your life (sometimes without your knowing, but that's a risk!) It allows your future generations to have a link to the past as well as you to look back on the times yourself. I love the beauty and yet utter simplicity of using a pen and paper to save my thoughts for later. What are your thoughts?
