Over the past twenty-three years of my life, I can not even tell you how many journals I've started.
Literally, I don't think I could tell you. There are currently five journals lined up underneath my piano, pages torn out of atleast four other journals underneath my bed, some stuffed away in a sunflower chest at my parents' house in Charlotte, and countless others online, out in oblivion somewhere, misplaced at a sleepover when I was eleven, or lost in a flooded car accident.
There were the first scraps of writing when I was in first grade. I would write short stories about firemen and giraffes on napkins, random sheets of paper, and soon enough, our old Mac computer [way before they were trendy to have].
Eventually came the tarnished teen years when everything was a tragic, and why can't I just get a boy to love me? and I hate my parents blew up all over the hard-to-read writing amidst doodles of penned flowers in the margins.
When I look back on my "now" journals, I find that I'm writing with more of a purpose. There's a reason I'm writing--to figure out some sort of emotion in a practical sense, to write about how thankful I am for today in an effort to feel more optimistic, or to simply see what kind of creative accomplishment can come out on paper by the time I'm done writing.
It's this kind of writing that feels the least passionate to me when I look back on my anthology of work. Out of all of these journals that I've gone back to read, the teen years are embarrassing, but atleast they are heart-felt and self-reflexive. The child-years are completely ridiculous, but atleast they were effortless and fun with no agenda involved.
So I may have spent most of my time today reading old journals rather than starting a new one, but I suppose this blog counts as journaling so I'm chalking it up to a win for the tenth day of November. All I know is that whenever I finally start my 34th journal with a tacky cover and an almost-inked-out pen, I want it to be more child-like this time around. More teen-spirited. Less productive. No agenda.
I want it to be a journal that when I find it ten years later and read over its battered pages, I feel nostalgic. I want to feel proud of the life experience I had when I was twenty-three. I want it to feel passionate and moving to my thirty-three year old self.
And I think I want it to start with this post.
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