The journal meme!

And no, this has NOTHING to do with academic journals.

Rather, the Bittersweet Girl (who is clearly good at this) has come up with a new meme: the Journal Meme. I've neglected my journals quite a lot since getting married (because my habit was always to write last thing before I went to sleep, which seemed odd with NLLDH lying beside me), and since starting this blog (YES, my blog is the navel-gazing substitute for keeping a journal, okay? satisfied?). But I still identify myself as someone who does keep a journal, and like Bittersweet Girl, I have a storage box full of old ones (sadly, they're in our storage space, so no pics available). So here goes:

1. When did you begin keeping a journal/diary?
I'm pretty sure I was nine.

2. Do you journal regularly or sporadically?
Now, sadly, sporadically - I was consistent about writing until maybe ten years ago, when I became much more sporadic. NLLDH has never once even intimated he wants to read my journals, but writing in them while lying in bed next to him always seemed odd. Plus, he'd make comments about me writing bad things about him in the journal (which I was never doing), and he'd always apologize, but it kind of interfered with the moment.

And, of course, once I started writing here, the journaling declined significantly. Kind of embarrassing, but there you are. I find I'm most consistent now when I travel, especially by myself, and I don't have anyone to bounce my daily observations off of.

3. Which, if any, of the following things do you use your journal for?: recording dreams, creative writing, arguing with particular individuals (your boss, your parents, your lover, etc.), listing books/movies, tracking your weight/diet/exercise, composing unsent/unsendable letters.
My journals are NOT repositories of elegant writing. Mostly I argue with particular individuals (I love that formulation), and/or rant about something awful (or, conversely, something wonderful) sufficiently to exorcise it from my system, which I know is usually at greater length than is socially acceptable to do in public. I have done the tracking of weight/diet/exercise thing, too, but that's never been super consistent. Mostly I used journaling as a way to work through something that was bothering me - if I went back and read them, most entries probably say the same basic thing about seven times, because that's how long I had to write about it to come to peace with it. This might fall into composing unsent/unsendable letters, too, though I never wrote explicitly to anyone else - when I journal, I'm always talking to myself.

Occasionally I had aspirations of using the journal to hone my writing and set goals of commenting on at least one interesting thing per entry (where interesting ≠ my current obsession), but I never did this especially consistently.

I've never used journals for actual creative writing or listing books/movies.

4. What other purpose(s) do you use your journal for?
Hmmm, think I mostly answered this above. I'll add that I did a lot of analysis of interpersonal relationships in my journal (which is a fancy way of saying I'd write about, "He LOOKED at me today!!!!!!" Or, "I don't know why she's been so cranky lately." That kind of thing).

5. What kind of material text do you use for a journal? (For example: leather bound hard-cover, cheap spiral notebook, etc.)
It can't be an "ordinary" notebook, like one you'd use for taking research notes or the like. My very first journal was in a very teen-girl type "diary" - there was a lock and a key, and a picture of a unicorn on the front (hey, it WAS the 1970s), and the paper was sky blue. I might have had at least one other journal that locked, but usually they're just "blank books" like the kind they sell in Barnes & Noble. I have to have lined paper, because left to my own devices, I can't write in straight lines, and it bugs me for my journal to look "messy" (although frequently my handwriting degenerates into a scrawl). But I didn't much like actual leather-bound books because they were too "dark" - I like bright and cheerful colors for my journals. I also prefer journals that stay open easily, so quite a few are spiral bound. And they MUST be fountain-pen friendly. There was a stretch during my senior year in high school when I typed my journal on onion-skin paper, but I think those all got thrown out when my parents moved.

6. Where do you keep your old journals?
I have a banker's box full of completed old journals in our storage space. I also have a bunch of half-used journals sitting in the drawers of my nightstand. (These are the ones I am theoretically using now.)

7. How often, if ever, have you read through your old journals?
Pretty much never. Ugh. I can't quite bear the thought. Since I pretty much used my journals for self-therapy, I really don't really want to go back and see how messed-up I was over a given issue at a certain time. (For instance, I remember when I went through a horrible bout of bullying in the seventh grade, I wrote about wondering what would happen if I drank a whole bottle of Nyquil. I don't want to go back and relive that. Seriously.)

I have occasionally glanced through the earlier entries when I've picked up a half-used journal to write in again many months (or years) later. But usually I try to avoid doing so.

But then, I'm quite good at cutting my losses and walking away from bad things in my life, on a range of levels.

8. Have you ever allowed anyone else to read your journals?
No. If historians find the stash sometime a few generations from now, go for it. Otherwise, not going to happen. They are NOT for public consumption by anyone who knows me.

9. How has your journal keeping changed since you began blogging?
Sadly, I really have stopped writing in a journal with any regularity. Like I said, I think that means this blog has replaced my journals as a means of self-therapy. On the other hand, I promise you that the writing here is at least somewhat more professional and focused and, hopefully, has some appeal to others, and believe me, my journal writing is NONE of those things. So the two kinds of writing do serve different purposes, and I keep planning to pick up the journal again. I do tend to write right before going to sleep, though, and because I get up so early to commute to school, I'm always trying to preserve sleep time. So it hasn't worked so far. And I also think there's only so much non-assigned writing I can produce at a given time - I can write either in my journal, or here, and more recently, it's been here. (And sometimes it's neither.)

10. Upload a picture of your journals (or as many as you can).
Well, most of them are in the storage space, and as for the ones that are here - so, if I dug them all out of their drawers, stacked them somewhere to photograph (after cleaning off whatever place that was), searched for the camera, made sure it has working batteries, wrestled its sticky buttons into place, took pics, downloaded the pics to my ancient laptop (because this one doesn't recognize the camera), then found my flash drive so that I could put the pics on my flash drive, then transfer them to this laptop and uploaded them... it would be June by the time I finished. So I'll pass on this for now, but if I get inspired (or we get a new camera), I'll post a pic sometime in the future. Sorry!

Like the Bittersweet Girl, I don't know who out there does or doesn't journal, so I'm not tagging, but if you do keep a journal, I'd love to see your answers!

(Final aside: I actually hate "to journal" as a transitive verb. I know I've used it above, because "to keep/write in a journal" gets really cumbersome. But "journaling" always seemed like a weird word to use to describe what I did. I never think of it as a specific genre - I'm just writing. For me, in a place no one else will see. That's perhaps why I've never been behind any of the structured "journaling" exercises one can do. I write when I feel like it, whatever I feel like writing, and if I don't feel like it, I don't. No offense meant to anyone who does think of it as "journaling.")

Comments

[Shane in Utah]

I've got nothing to add on the journal front, but I can tell you what happens if you drink an entire bottle of Nyquil, based on the experience of a friend of mine in high school (seeking a recreational experience, not suicide): you get kind of woozy for a while, then pass out and wake up 10 hours later in a puddle of green vomit with the worse headache of your life. Neither a very pleasant recreational experience, nor a very effective suicide technique. Glad you didn't try it...

[Ink]

Glad to read about your writing practice--it's interesting! :)

[Susan]

I was just looking at the (outside of) the box holding a lot of my old journals, which I know contain lots of sad entries from sad times in my life. I'm actually contemplating pitching them now to make more room--I don't know that I want CG to read them someday, and I don't even want to read them. But I'm not quite sure it's right to pitch them. What keeps you holding onto your box?

[The Bittersweet Girl]

Thanks, new kid, for taking up this meme! It's ironic that you would praise me for writing good memes (although I appreciate it) because when I first started blogging I vowed to not participate in memes -- I'm not entirely sure why. A form of snobbery, I guess.

I'm with you on "journaling" but I am equally turned off by the term "diary" -- I certainly don't "keep a diary" like a 19th C spinster lady. (Says this 20th C older, unmarried woman with numerous diaries.)