Journalling Again

As a supplement to the Memory Project, I’ve been gathering all my old journal and blog entries together. Along the way, I’ve made an interesting discovery: the more I blogged, the less I journaled.

Before I started blogging here and there (in 2004, wow), I’d been keeping a daily journal for a couple of years, and I managed that for a few years after entering the blogging era. But gradually, the blogging time displaced the journaling time until I was doing a lot of blogging and not much journaling.

There were a couple of years where I found a balance between the two and in 2019, I spent so much time dictating in the car – it had become a habit everywhere I went when driving along – that there was a lot of journaling to go with more blogging than had been usual for the couple of years leading up to that, plus almost 325,000 words worth of fiction. I think it may have been my most productive year ever going by raw word count, but the journal entries mostly never had their dictation cleaned up during the Dictation Era. I’m afraid to dip into them, but since that time period is up next I’m going to have to, and I’ll probably clean up some of the dictation while I’m there. Well, all of it, if I know myself at all.

But this entry is to note that in the middle of February I started deliberately keeping a journal again. On paper. Oh, it will eventually make it into pixels, but probably not until I fill the book. At that point, it might make interesting reading.

The reason for that is probably that as I’ve been going through the old journals (I’m in 2005 right now) I’ve found a bunch of little day-to-day sort of memories in those long-ago files from when the kids were small. Things I’d forgotten, things only hazily remembered, things that I couldn’t put a date to. Going back and reading those (and adding some commentary here and there) has added to my understanding of myself and how I came to be the person I am today.

So I’m trying again.

I’m not managing daily, but I’m trying to move in that direction, ritualizing actually sitting to eat my breakfast in the morning (which has not been usual recently between animal care, flipping over that last load of laundry run the night before, swapping out the dishes in the dishwasher, and getting ready for the day) and scribbling with a pencil for a couple of minutes longer than it takes to eat my toast. Pairing it with my general quest to try penning one haiku or senryu each day, I feel like I might be able to get to more or less daily if I keep at it. So far, I’m averaging just a bit better than every second day – 17 entries in 31 days, although there have been a couple of larger gaps, so weekly averages can vary a bit so far.

It’s satisfying somehow. Journalling fills a mental gap that blogging doesn’t and it’s something I’ve somehow missed. At this point, I’ve no idea if this is a long-term change in habit. It’s far too soon to judge that. But it is a short-term one, at least, and that’s fine.

Be well, everyone.