About two months ago, I bought a new journal. This isn't unusual for me - I've kept a diary / journal for almost as long as I can remember. There have been times in my life where I've felt that whatever journal I'm writing in at the time has been the only thing tethering me to sanity. There have been years where I've written only two or three times during that year, and years where I've probably written nothing. But there have been years when I've filled hundreds of pages with whatever is going on in my life.
The journals I wrote in high school are almost unintelligible - I wrote in pencil and many of the pages have smudged and smeared nearly beyond recognition. Those years are written on notebook paper, clipped into three ring binders, and filled with the trials and tribulations that come with being a teenager. But that was the first time that I wrote nearly every day - often at 1am, after the homework and nightly phone marathons were completed - and I began to realize how putting thoughts on the page helped me think through my problems and confusion. I actually remember keeping two different journals in that time frame, one focused on the daily stuff that I was dealing with, and one focused on religion. There are at least five or six journals from that time, and I'm pretty sure I still have them all.
I did not write anywhere nearly as much in college, although I did occasionally fill a page or two of a journal I kept during that time. I clearly remember the night that I changed my course from being dead set on going to medical school to thinking I would do "something else." I was writing in my journal at that time, and I guess I was finally able to determine that the medical school direction was not where I really wanted to go. Writing it down that night gave me the strength to change my course; I'm not sure I would have otherwise done that. I think I was in my third year of college at the time, had already taken the MCAT, and was beginning to contemplate medical school applications. That night, everything changed course.
After J and I got married, I didn't write for a long time. I'm sure I have a page or two from various early years of marriage, but it almost felt like I had no use for writing in journals at that point. I was too busy trying to figure out how to live life as a married adult, not to mention answering the whole "what do I do with my life" question, since I'd thrown medical school out the window. I'm sure I have whatever journal I might have written in at that time, but I have no clear memory of writing in the first year of marriage.
The writing hiatus extended to law school. For obvious reasons, during law school I quit nearly every extraneous activity except for eating, a bit of sleep, and a bit of tennis (hitting the hell out of a tennis ball should be considered therapy as far as I'm concerned). For my law school graduation, an aunt gave me a gift certificate to Levenger, a web site dedicated to lovers of all things paper, pens, and books. As I debated what to order, I kept coming back to a set of journals on their web site.
This was the beginning of the crazy time in my life, which meant my brain was starting to look for a way to sort things out. I remembered the way writing had helped me organize my thoughts and think through my problems in the past, and that was probably what steered me to the journals. I bought two of them with the gift certificate, both over a hundred pages in length. I zoomed through the first one, filling page after page with frustration, thoughts, anxieties, and whatever was on my mind. Life got harder, things got stranger, and this was the time in my life where I felt that writing was one of the few things that kept me tethered to sanity.
Somewhere in the midst of all the chaos and The Crazy, I went on a trip with some friends to a water park (it was high summer in Texas). I wasn't really in the mood to go, but the trip had been planned for a while and I felt bad backing out. I spent the morning with my group of friends, but volunteered to stay at our picnic table and watch all of our stuff for the afternoon. I spent the next three hours or so sitting at that picnic bench, writing and thinking. Heh, now that seems like an amazing luxury - I'm not sure I ever see that much free time at once any more! Anyway, that afternoon as I was writing, I came to an understanding - perhaps even an epiphany if you want to get dramatic (which I usually don't). I'm not sure I can accurately describe it, but I was in the middle of a sentence and it was like a floodlight came on. If I ever had to choose a turning point in my life, that afternoon, that one sentence I was writing might very well be the one I would choose. It was the start of some clarity in my life.
I'm sure I would have figured it out eventually; I'm sure I would have worked through things just the same had I not been writing. But I'm not sure everything would have crystallized in quite the same way, nor am I sure I would have recognized the importance when everything came together. For whatever reason, still having that journal, still having the words I was thinking at that exact point in time seems inordinately valuable now.
When I bought the new journal a few months ago, I still had another unused journal in my drawer, just like the ones I bought with my aunt's gift certificate. I bought it several years ago, and it just felt too heavy for the writing I want to do now, almost like it required a life crisis to justify writing in it. Fortunately, I don't have one of those going on right now. So instead, I bought a new journal that I hoped would inspire me to write more. I wrote in that one for two or three nights, and then haven't written in it again until tonight. Which is great, because in those two or three nights that I did write in it, I wrote down some goals for myself. One of those goals was to write more, perhaps by starting a blog to help me stay on track. Mission accomplished so far.
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