Flashback! Or, What Journaling Means to Me
Hi (waves)!
I've been busy lately. I next to never get computer time at home anymore, what with Maddie being an utter terror in the room with the computer on one hand and either gardening or work now 3 days a week taking up all my naptime; and at work I only get it when Nothing Else Is Happening at the reference desk, but with Summer Reading Club looming I've been using even my reference desk downtime to work on SRC stuff. This leaves me with next to no blog time.
But, sadly for you perhaps, I have been getting my blogging energy out in other ways, ways no one else can see! I can write longhand in a notebook at any odd time of day! Nobody else ever reads it though. So on the bright side, I can write whatever I want, as crappily as I want, and I don't have to worry about what anybody thinks. But on the other hand, I never get any feedback from other people on it either. I never get to have a CONVERSATION about what I wrote. So yes, if you are ever torn between LEAVING ME A COMMENT and NOT LEAVING ME A COMMENT, I much prefer that you leave me a comment, even an inane one. If I didn't want you to comment, I could just as easily write all this stuff in my little notebook. Just as easily? MORE easily, that is.
This has been on my mind a bit since Sunday, when, having moved a box of files out of Maddie's room (finally), I started to sort through them, and got immediately distracted by a file labeled "middle school." Which is shorthand for "stuff I wrote in middle school." Among them, the daily journals we had to keep in middle school english class.
This is a note to anyone who is in middle school now, or knows someone who's in middle school now, who is required to keep a daily journal. SAVE IT. Do not throw it away! Hold onto it somewhere in a file labeled "middle school"! Because no matter how boring you think it is now, twenty years from now you will pick it up and it will be THE FUNNIEST THING YOU HAVE EVER READ! Even the entries where you do nothing but say "My life is so BORing!" ESPECIALLY those entries!
Seriously, it was pretty clear that my life was so boring because I had a very warped impression of what "exciting" meant. I got a fortune cookie that said "Thrilling times ahead!" and I was SURE this could not possibly refer to our plans to go to Cleveland for the weekend to SEE FRIGGIN' LES MIZ, as that was not near thrilling enough. "Thrilling" could ONLY mean being kidnapped with several other kids, some of whom obviously needed to be impressed by me, and working together to single-handedly (or at least, no adult interference) defeat the bad guys and save the day for all. Otherwise, the fortune cookie was totally lying.
When we started the journal at the beginning of 7th grade, I didn't get the point quite yet. This was supposed to help my writing HOW?* When I wanted to write ghost stories and science fiction and tales of intrigue? But as the entries go on, it became something more than an assignment. It became WHERE I GOT TO TALK. Quiet awkward nerdy friendless me could suddenly be ELOQUENT about whatever I felt like talking about. When our teacher would ask for volunteers to read our entries aloud, I always volunteered, because it was the only time any of my classmates ever heard anything about WHAT I REALLY THOUGHT about life-- even though most of what I said was "I'm so bored!"
It was halfway through 7th grade that I started keeping an actual personal journal of my own. It took the English class journal to get my writing voice Unstuck and flowing. Now these past few years I haven't been writing enough, and I started free journaling again, and now again I feel like I can write more and more.
So, if you have any of your old journals packed away somewhere-- pull 'em out sometime. It's eye-opening.
*Of course, keeping a journal in 7th grade ALSO helps your writing when you grow up and want to write a book from the viewpoint of a 7th grader. Maybe not quite in the way you thought when you first kept it, though.
I've been busy lately. I next to never get computer time at home anymore, what with Maddie being an utter terror in the room with the computer on one hand and either gardening or work now 3 days a week taking up all my naptime; and at work I only get it when Nothing Else Is Happening at the reference desk, but with Summer Reading Club looming I've been using even my reference desk downtime to work on SRC stuff. This leaves me with next to no blog time.
But, sadly for you perhaps, I have been getting my blogging energy out in other ways, ways no one else can see! I can write longhand in a notebook at any odd time of day! Nobody else ever reads it though. So on the bright side, I can write whatever I want, as crappily as I want, and I don't have to worry about what anybody thinks. But on the other hand, I never get any feedback from other people on it either. I never get to have a CONVERSATION about what I wrote. So yes, if you are ever torn between LEAVING ME A COMMENT and NOT LEAVING ME A COMMENT, I much prefer that you leave me a comment, even an inane one. If I didn't want you to comment, I could just as easily write all this stuff in my little notebook. Just as easily? MORE easily, that is.
This has been on my mind a bit since Sunday, when, having moved a box of files out of Maddie's room (finally), I started to sort through them, and got immediately distracted by a file labeled "middle school." Which is shorthand for "stuff I wrote in middle school." Among them, the daily journals we had to keep in middle school english class.
This is a note to anyone who is in middle school now, or knows someone who's in middle school now, who is required to keep a daily journal. SAVE IT. Do not throw it away! Hold onto it somewhere in a file labeled "middle school"! Because no matter how boring you think it is now, twenty years from now you will pick it up and it will be THE FUNNIEST THING YOU HAVE EVER READ! Even the entries where you do nothing but say "My life is so BORing!" ESPECIALLY those entries!
Seriously, it was pretty clear that my life was so boring because I had a very warped impression of what "exciting" meant. I got a fortune cookie that said "Thrilling times ahead!" and I was SURE this could not possibly refer to our plans to go to Cleveland for the weekend to SEE FRIGGIN' LES MIZ, as that was not near thrilling enough. "Thrilling" could ONLY mean being kidnapped with several other kids, some of whom obviously needed to be impressed by me, and working together to single-handedly (or at least, no adult interference) defeat the bad guys and save the day for all. Otherwise, the fortune cookie was totally lying.
When we started the journal at the beginning of 7th grade, I didn't get the point quite yet. This was supposed to help my writing HOW?* When I wanted to write ghost stories and science fiction and tales of intrigue? But as the entries go on, it became something more than an assignment. It became WHERE I GOT TO TALK. Quiet awkward nerdy friendless me could suddenly be ELOQUENT about whatever I felt like talking about. When our teacher would ask for volunteers to read our entries aloud, I always volunteered, because it was the only time any of my classmates ever heard anything about WHAT I REALLY THOUGHT about life-- even though most of what I said was "I'm so bored!"
It was halfway through 7th grade that I started keeping an actual personal journal of my own. It took the English class journal to get my writing voice Unstuck and flowing. Now these past few years I haven't been writing enough, and I started free journaling again, and now again I feel like I can write more and more.
So, if you have any of your old journals packed away somewhere-- pull 'em out sometime. It's eye-opening.
*Of course, keeping a journal in 7th grade ALSO helps your writing when you grow up and want to write a book from the viewpoint of a 7th grader. Maybe not quite in the way you thought when you first kept it, though.