“Walking from my apartment to the park, I go by the two apartments I used to live in, the library I used to work in, the school where I earned my MA, the library I currently work in, the school where I’m currently earning my PhD, and nearly ever other scene from the last five years of my life.  Strange I have such a sense of time passing in this place when I am confronted with all of it every day.”

More than a year ago, I told you that I wrote the last words in my red journal.  Well, now I’m getting ready to write the last words in the black journal.  I started journaling seriously (a word I hate, by the way) the night before I left for college.  The first one (the blue journal) took me more than four years.  The second (the red journal) took me three years.  And the latest, the black journal, has taken me only just over a year to fill.

I started the black journal on December 5, 2009, with the words, “A new start not unlike the many before.”  I could sum up its contents like I have previously with the other journals, but I’m not ready yet.  There’s a reason I wrote all those words only to myself.  It’s strange the way words and feelings become less personal over time, but in this case, not enough time has yet passed.

I’ve always had this impetus to journal.  I could say it’s the way I hold onto experiences or keep time from passing too quickly.  But, really, it’s the way I work things out for myself.  It’s hard to know what I think about anything until I write it down.  And, even if I am hesitant to admit to being this narcissistic, I regularly reread what I’ve written.  Too often, I sit down to record my feelings, and instead spend a half hour reminding myself of what I felt a year ago, a month ago, yesterday.

I don’t know if there’s any better way to learn about yourself.

I have this self-awareness that the things I write this moment will probably not be true the next.  Life always surprises and as good as I think I am at reading people and even predicting the future (this may be an INFJ thing), things rarely go the way I expect them to.  They change too slowly and then in an instant.

That’s all the more reason I can’t wait until tomorrow to write about that thing that happened today.  At least that’s how I feel lately, which is how I’ve managed to fill the black journal so quickly.  Journaling has this new urgency about it and I have to put as many thoughts down as I can.

I used to be the kind of journaler who would skip weeks at a time and sometimes even months, but now I feel off if I don’t at least write a few lines before I go to sleep.  On the weekends, I fill pages.  It feels good.

So, goodbye black journal.  We had a good year.

Much as I’ve made a huge change toward not avoiding my problems, after I finished with school last week, it only took a couple days for stuff to catch up to me.  Not problems so much as things I’ve been distracted from.  I never stop thinking, even when I’m too busy for anything else, but there are things that find me in silence and calm that don’t find me when I’m running around like crazy.

Part of me does want to cartwheel everywhere and speak exclusively of rainbows and cotton candy.  But, a bigger part of me likes this introspective stuff, especially when it sneaks up on me.  I’m just frustrated that there’s no time to sit by windows and sip tea while I write.  Instead I’m at work, where you can find me every day and always. But, I like the contrast more than wide open spaces.

This is the kind of stuff that fills journals.  It’s not at a point where I can explain it to anyone and there’s something special about keeping it to myself.  Pieces of it, I think, will come out, but I’m not even sure how they fit together yet.

I only journal my biggest feelings and I have fewer of them than I did even just a couple years ago.  When the ground was unstable beneath me, I would run for my journal all the time.  I would put everything on paper, because I was desperate and it was the only thing I could think to do.

When I have big feelings to write and I don’t, I feel like I’m avoiding myself.  I’m avoiding myself now, but it feels more like prolonging the wait for happy reunion.

I’m thinking of how the things I write about have changed.  And how they haven’t.  Same themes mostly.  Maybe to different degrees.  So many things I wasn’t expecting.  Happy surprise at the person I’ve become.  Doubt about the things I still don’t have, but not with desperation. Okay, with a little bit of desperation.

I used to always write the words something and not nothing, because I was bored in my life and I didn’t know how to change it.  Then a whole of somethings came my way, but still not the something I wanted most of all.

If stuff, things, and even somethings are not specific enough for you, I’m sorry.  I hate vaguery too.  If this blog cannot be a comprehensive look at my life, then I at least like its gaps to be obvious.

“In the last few years I’ve let go of my taboos on swearing and drinking alcohol.  It’s not important to me to maintain my innocent girl persona anymore.  Now I’m just an innocent girl who drinks and sometimes swears.”

Pictured: Blue Journal (August 28, 2002 – December 13, 2006), Red Journal (December 17, 2006 – December 5, 2009), Black Journal (December 5, 2009 – present), and a black Bic pen (I use these to write everything).

I’ve been journaling off and on for most of my life, I guess, but never with any kind of consistency. Some of that writing I still have, but a lot of it I destroyed. It’s risky business having a journal around when you’ve got four siblings. I count my real start as the night before I left for college. It was August 28, 2002. I began with, “this is it”–very possibly the most optimistic words in the entire journal. No, it’s not that bad, but if I didn’t have this accidentally-symbolic blue journal, I think it would be too easy for me to forget about a time in my life when I was miserable.

I’m also grateful for the way it catches me wrestling with the theological questions that have become such a big part of my life. Admittedly, it is difficult for me to read some of the things I wrote when I believed in a supernatural God and all the meant to be and everything happens for a reason stuff that goes along with it. ¹ The worst is that the whole things reeks of a girl struggling to be perfect. You can imagine the kind of disappointment and self-loathing that followed from that.

Four and a half years after starting, I reached the final page of the blue journal. I had a college degree and a great deal more confidence, but best of all, I was happy. Looking back over all those pages, though, I was a little embarrassed with the self preoccupation and so I ended with, “For so many years now I have been blinded by my own struggles and insecurities, and have failed to see those of others . . . .” Now, I’m willing to cut myself some slack. If there’s one place you should be given free reign for even the worst kind of self-importance, it’s in a journal.

I began the red journal while at home for Christmas during my first year of grad school. I was about to turn 23 and I meant business. My first words, “22 was the year I sat patiently and waited for an amazing life to find me. 23 is the year I say, ‘screw patience–there’s no virtue in waiting quietly–I’m fighting for the life I want!’” The red journal was when I discovered a thing called paragraphs, and I haven’t looked back since.

As if life is consistent enough for a summary, I’ll say that this journal is mostly about me trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, trying to become bolder and more confident, and an embarrassing lot of boy-craziness. It’s also where I first wondered if I could do something with this kind of informal writing. A blog perhaps?

I could say the blog has negatively impacted my journaling. For a while I didn’t know what to do with my journal if I was pouring my heart out to the internet, but I eventually found a place for it again and I’ve gone back to slowly filling the pages, sometimes writing every day and other times taking weeks and even months off.

Just a couple days ago, I wrote the final words in the red journal.  Sure, it didn’t happen as dramatically as I hoped, but I have become bolder and more confident–exactly what I wished for myself when I started three years ago. Finally, I encouraged myself to stop shying away from things, to stop trying to be anonymous, and instead to work on creating a name for myself.  For the first time ever, I’m thinking about my career.

For my first entry in the black book, I decided to ponder the question of why I journal in the first place.  Like blogging, I can think of many reasons, but the real one is that I just enjoy it so much.  I love it.

1. It’s true that I don’t believe these things anymore, but the reason it bothers me is that I used them as an excuse to sit and be patient rather than go after what I wanted in life.

Written in my journal on August 12, 2009.

Written in my journal on June 20, 2006.  The Summer between undergrad and grad school.

Forgive, if you can, my misspellings and undying idealism.