Keeping a journal

[ladyambrosia]

readin this thread makes me itchy to journal..I have got to narrow down the search for a good one. Although I do have an extra Staples Eco notebook maybe I should just use that.

[adichew]

(Edited) extract from rumination entry "On why I write"

 

(Edited the long block quote out to save some space and have this look neater)

 

That is beautiful. It is beautiful because I could tell just from the writing that you meant it. And as for journaling, I fail to see the point of doing it if you don't write without some feeling. And you definitely write with feeling when you write.

 

Thank you. I sometimes think I have lost my writing flair, and I guess this is pretty much what's left. If it means it's coming back, that's brilliant.

 

Sometimes, I think that the only place some feelings can be expressed is in a journal or diary or something like that. That's one of their main uses.

[Jon R.]

Hello from Kansas City, Missouri (central USA). I was registered here several years ago, but that info's become irretrievable due to ISP changes, computer disasters, etc. So I decided to re-register after looking around for quite a while last night, and reading up through page ten (so far) in this excellent thread about journals

 

I just turned 70. This is the first birthday I can recall that truly alarms me, which is doubly disappointing as I've always felt I was not ageist. But anybody here over, say, 60, will know that there's more than simple ageism (if that) at work here. Oh, well.

 

Journals have been in my life -- my single, often pretty isolated life -- ever since 1963. That first year's book I destroyed for reasons too brazenly stupid to go into now. It did seem the right thing to do, at that moment. There've been a couple of lapses of as much as two years, and several of anywhere from a couple of weeks to two months, but overall I've written at least two million words, both longhand and on computer. I enjoy pen-and-ink writing so much that I always regret switching back to electronic media, even though, apart from the vulnerability to obsolescence (somewhat avoidable with careful maintenance and "migration") computer journal writing does, I think, offer some advantage over longhand. Chief among them: the ability to search instantly for the most obscure things, with a very high likelihood of finding what you're looking for. Another seeming advantage is the ability, at least if you touch-type at 90 words per minute as I do, to churn out far more words in far shorter time -- valuable not only where time's at a premium (it almost never has been for lucky me), and for what's variously called rapidwriting, free-form writing, etc. And that technique in turn is valuable to some writers in bringing hitherto unnoticed ideas to the surface (sometimes not eveen seen till a later reading), and, perhaps most important, putting that pesky "Inner Critic" in his or her place. (I once had a dialog with my inner critic where I ended up, to my total surprise, in tears because I got him to see my point of view and hush up. This was completely unexpected, at least on a conscious level.)

 

Big influences on my writing, journals and otherwise: Natalie Goldberg; Buddhism, especially Zen; Catholicism; a wonderful liberal education (and two years of grad school) at the University of Kansas, where I graduated almost half a century ago, in 1962; many, many books of varying quality about writing from the public libraries and from bookstores; a fascinatiaon with good shifting technology and with vintage writing instruments as well as the fewer and fewer good contemporary ones; practically a mania for notebooks and other forms of paper (I know the psychological root of this, relating to my mother's death when I was twelve, but that's another story too far off topic), the feeling of being "cool" or however that feels these days to be writing in a bohemian cafe (there's a wonderful one or two here in Kansas City) and hoping against hope to meet fellow afficionados there... But above all the personal insight I gain from almost every page, even the most trivial ones. (Samuel Johnson advised to "write down the prices of things," and I've found this to be spot-on good advice for reading years later.)

 

It has taken me years to realize that being Buddhist (or Catholic for that matter) does not equate to being invulnerable, perfect, inviolable, never flawed. I don't think I'll ever really get it down pat. This is a stumbling block for me in general, as well as in writing, where I have to just grit my teeth and ignore it. Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, whom I admire more, perhaps, than any fairly contemporary figure, said in response to a student qustion once, "The life of a Zen master is one mistake after another." How much more, then for ordinary Buddhists llke me. Or anybody else at all, for that matter.

 

Journals are great for writing down one's mistakes.

 

Privacy? Yes, that does concern me. Political rants are no more severe nor violent than I see in print so often. That doesn't worry me as long as we maintain a healthy vestige of freedom of expression in my nation. Personal details that could hurt or embarrass possible readers after my death are what I fret about. I know a few pages I could just find and rip out. I will not do it. Anybody liable to find those pages ought to be mature and realistic enough to accept them for what the are: often I was hopelessly infatuated or even in love, and gave full reign to expressing my desires. None of them, I think, exceed what's in "Lady Chatterley's Lover," anyway!

 

My journals are scattered all over the place in this chaos of a one-bedroom apartment. I don't even know how many there are. Several I made from scratch using Coptic stitching, altered Japanese stab binding, or, rarely Smythe sewing.

 

I've been non-journaling for four months now. I intend to start in again today. This thread helped me make that resolve. And once I get started I often don't want to quit. Being retired since 1999 and in reasonably good health apart from a couple of urgent, life-saving surgeries, having had no really startling medical events, I've had the increasingly rare blessing, in our workaholic society, of great expanses of leisure. I live not startlingly far above the official poverty level, but that seldom has anyting but a good effect on my enjoyment of the things important to me. Being basically a nerd (yea!) with many traits of Asperger Syndrome, they are generally not exactly things that appeal to a broad spectrum of more normally functioning citizens!

 

This isn't all I wanted to write here, but I know it's more than many of my pen-and-ink comrades will wish to read at once. I hope I will put a bit more where it's more at home, in the introductions section. How soon, I don't know.

 

Oh -- I almost forgot. What prompted me to write this response was actually the several excellent posts here about depression and journal-writing. I have been diagnosed with clinical depression, sometimes major enough to be hospitalized, since age seventeen. I've taken dozens of antidepressants to little or no effect; had electro-convulsive therapy (around 18 treatments) that helped for several hours or a couple of days, then things were back to deep black again. However, the ECT, since it was bilateral, left me with complete amnesia of a few years immediately before the treatments began.

 

My journals were my link to my past then. It was like reading about somebody else's life -- names I only vaguely reconized if at all, events totally absent from recollection, etc. Without the journals, my amnesia would still be complete. Those memories are still gone after those 1973 treatments. (ECT today is a good deal less risk-prone and usually unilateral.)

 

So there's another good reason for a journal, and one that records even small daily events.

 

Thanks for bearing with me.

 

(Note: I am editing this for the usual misspellings, unclear passages, etc. I'm proud of myself. I usually don't edit and regret it later on boards where you can't do it!)

Edited February 19, 2010 by Jon R.

[Jon R.]

Oh -- one true story that I think points up the potential power of journal writing.

 

My best friend, whom I consider "the love of my life," was a younger (by about 17 years) man, a Navy vet, named David, who'd lived with HIV/AIDS for fourteen years. He was interviewed on local TV twice because of his charismatic personality. Yet he was a fairly odd, eccentric person. I loved him so much I can't begin to express it. It was the only time in my life I felt that "music inside me" that I'd always assumed was a song-writer's cliché. Our first conversation the day we met ws six hours long, and I was so shaken by it I'll never forget its tone and some of the details.

 

In the year 2000 he died of lymphoma facilitated by his depleted immune system; any treatment of the cancer would have killed him along with the cells. To have been present at his death I consider the greatest privilege of my life so far.

 

Well... About two years later I was in bed, where I usually read, going over the hundreds of journal pages about our meeting, our conversations, funny things that happened when we were shopping, my jealousy of his other friends, etc. I got as pulled into those pages as I do into Dickens or, say, Ruth Rendell.

 

After about two hours' nonstop reading, I looked up, looked at my watch, and thought (probably outloud -- I do live alone, you know) "I think I'll give him a call and see what he's doing."

 

Only then did I realize with a sinking, devastating, feeling, that David was no longer alive.

 

Journals can have powerful effects. I advocate reading your own journals, but not till a year or two -- preferably more -- have passed. As with fiction, what you write today is usually going to seem like contemptible garbage tomorrow, or next week, or next month even. Later, it may seem so wonderful you wonder how you ever wrote it. I don't know the reason for this, but it's true, and I'm not the first to observe it.

 

But if you're one who prefers never to re-read, or even to burn journals fairly soon, that of course is your choice and who knows, it may be just the right one for you.

[ailleurs]

Lots of people know I journal, but my journal is just for me.

 

I don't hide my journals from my husband, but I do write in a language he doesn't speak. I trust my husband 100% and know he would never read anything other than the few passages I've written in English specifically to share with him.

 

That being said, writing in another language gives me a way to keep current in that language and offers a bit of piece of mind in case the volume is ever lost. I find I am more honest with myself too, knowing it's less likely those words will be read by anyone other than me.

[jjdeal]

Mine is also off limits. I express my deepest thoughts there, although I also express them to my wife, who can respond and help!

[Dowser]

I have several journals open by subject, so I am always writing at least in one journal throughout the day. My journals are private, my wife of 33 years never reads them so I can leave them anywhere. I use journals to sort out my over active mind so I need to clean my mind daily to keep a clear head. It is best for solving problems, organizing projects and dealing with personalities. My journals are mostly composition books and small moleskines.