Journals & Diaries (part 2)

This piece of furniture sits in our bedroom.
Look closely. What do you see?
(Ok, not too close... I guess I should have dusted before snapping a photograph.)
Let's see... there's a television... some folded blankets... a few photographs... and journals and diaries and journals and diaries and journals.

If you didn't already read Journals & Diaries (part 1), you might want to click and read that first.

It's important to me to choose the just-right journal.  It has to "fit" for the way I feel about life at the time. It has to "feel" right; I mean literally "feel" as in "touch." I have a writing friend who once asked me, "Why do you hold journals like that and rub them that way when you're choosing one?" I'd never realized I did that, but I didn't stop.  It just needs to feel like where I'd want to pour myself for the next 3-4 years.

When I look over the covers of all of my adult journals, I notice a lot of greens, cool colors, soft florals.  (I don't know what was up with choosing that red harsh one.  Maybe it was during a midlife crisis period!)

There are so many reasons I write or keep a journal.

• I can keep a record of important events, hold on to things I don't want to forget.
• It's habit.  It's what I do.  
• Laura Ingalls Wilder did it.  Then after she was 60, she told the stories of her life in books that I loved to read. She's one of my heroes. I've always wanted to be like her. 😊
• Writing in present tense captures the very essence of now... Stories told "in the now" have so much more power than "I remember when" stories.  Memories have a way of rounding the edges... the hard becomes easier... the sad isn't as raw... the angry isn't as harsh... the joy isn't as sappy... the turmoil isn't as big a deal... 
• Writing is therapy.  I believe writing is the physical act of organizing thought. When going through a mess, sitting down and writing about it often helps to work it out.  I have noticed that there are some times when I literally avoid writing because I'm not willing to work through it yet. I don't want to put the energy into thinking clearly about whatever it is.  
  

Some of my journals, like these, had a specific purpose.  
In 1998 I became a part of the National Writing Project and was active in it for many years. 
These journals are filled with quick writes, reading responses, and regular journal-type thoughts, opinions, and ideas.
Another difference is that every entry in these has been read and responded to by a writing partner.
As a co-director of the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project Open Summer Institute for several years, one of my favorite things was reading and responding to the participants' daily journal entries.
True, you write differently when you know someone will be reading it. It's a different but powerful kind of journal writing experience.

If any of those reasons sound like good ones to you, start!  You don't have to have started when you were 8.  Start now.