I was skimming some old journal entries, and it reminded me how much I like being able to go back and have some sort of record of parts of my life that would otherwise blur together or be forgotten entirely. It's not the reason I got my LJ in the first place, but it's a big part of the reason that I still care about updating it. I have other "journals" scattered all over my computer, some from before I got my LJ, others with things that are either too personal or too incoherant for me to post online, but LJ is the most organized and continuous journal that I've ever kept. Since I don't normally think of it as a record of my life, the things it captures or doesn't capture have a particular bias. It's not a complete picture in and of itself, but there's a huge difference between remembering, say, "hey, I used to be fairly close to Cecille" and reading a post or comment from back then and actually remembering what it was like to have that relationship.
My point in writing all this is that I realized that I've barely written anything about my life over the past year at least. All of the records that I do have are either superficial (I'm taking this class and it's cool), or are very personal things that I again just desperately needed to express somehow. Most of the things in the latter category are, uhm, not exactly happytimes. (For some reason, I don't like posting angst to LJ.) But I also want to remember what it was like when I wasn't on the verge of tears and beating my head against a wall because of asdfglkhjkl;sdjgfBULLSHIT, and I don't think that I have as much of that. Part of it is that I use LJ a lot less, and don't have as many IM conversations. And I don't use facebook all that much (I also feel like it doesn't make as good a record as LJ or IM convos somehow). Part of it is that I don't have as much time to write about what's going on in my life, or even process it all into words. Part of it is that I'm existing more in the "real world" and less online than I used to, and the real world doesn't get recorded in the same way. Part of it is that I keep wanting to edit the rambling out of my posts, and it means that I never actually post anything.
But, back to my original reason for writing this, I want to try to keep a proper journal again. Maybe post more to LJ, maybe just keep something private if that will make me feel less obligated to fuss about the writing. (Though I like that LJ encourages me to explain things more thoroughly, because I'm expecting other people to read it, rather than just writing something that I'll understand today, and may be totally cryptic in three years. On the other hand, my LJ posts have more of a bias because I know that my friends may read it, so I'll edit things out or slant them to be less embarrassing/personal/offensive to people who may be reading. Thus creating an inaccurate record.) But I want to have something I can read in a few years and think "oh yeah, that was a good day," not just "wow, I was unhappy back then."
And. I'm not going to edit this post. Because if I do, I will only have the original sentence I meant to post ("I want to keep a better record of my life"), and have lost all the BS rambling thoughts that make than more than just a cryptic statement of intention that I never carried through with.
Also, I want to write more because I swear I am forgetting how to use language properly.