I’ve been journaling since I was in junior high school in one form or another. Diaries, daily calendar entries, half-filled spiral notebooks… Most of those early journals are lost or stored away in boxes in the shed we rent. But here at home I have them going back through the first years of our marriage in 1972. I always journal in first person. That’s a given. If I want to crab and whine, I want it to feel like me!
But until recently it never occurred to me to look at the WAY I write my journals. Sound weird? Well, a few months ago when I was writing it dawned on me that my journal entries sound like, of all things, letters home. It was almost as if I were expecting someone to gather round the hearth and read them to the family. Almost as if the letter had come from a long way off, penned by the hand of someone who’d been gone for a long time — and is homesick.
Author Frank Kafka once said:
Writing is the most personal form of prayer.
~
That being one of my favorite quotes, my first thought was, well sure! I’m writing to God! That has to be it, right? But the more I thought about it the more I knew I would NOT use some of that language if I were truly writing to God! I doubt very much he would appreciate it. So the idea of whom I was writing to became a puzzlement to me.
“Where I’m From” by artist/author Jan L. Richardson
Then one day I was checking out author/artist Jan L. Richardson’s website. I had just finished reading her book In the Sanctuary of Women and was curious about the other part of her career as an artist. Believe it or not, she makes the most beautiful and unusual pictures from torn paper! And while exploring her gallery on her site, I stumbled on a picture that practically screamed at me. It was entitled Where I’m From. One look at it and I KNEW that whatever it was, wherever it represented, that was where I was from, too. Sounds strange, I know, but it felt almost like a homecoming for me, like I recognized the picture as a snapshot from my childhood.
To this day I haven’t quite figured out WHERE that home is, but neither am I plagued with an incessant need to know. I look at the picture and I just know that it’s out there somewhere. It makes writing my journals seem even more important because I know someone somewhere is at least aware of the stirrings of my heart and is waiting with great anticipation to see what calamity has befallen me now!
What about you guys? Do any of you feel as if you write your journals to someone special? I’m really curious.
Impromptu Promptlings 
I don’t really keep a journal of daily entries, but I do keep a recipe book in a spiral bound holiday notebook.
I started it thinking that I would keep all my great recipes there and pass it along to my children. The children never happened. But that is okay, I keep it going occasionally entering new recipes I’ve tried at various family functions….keeping notes on who liked what, or when I served it, the origins of the recipe, etc….who knows, maybe one of my nephews or niece will discover it one day and make a book about it and become a famous published author.
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Ooo! I think that’s a super idea! Wish someone had thought to do that for me. I suck at cooking. And that’s just another KIND of journal. That’s why I like the idea of journaling so much. A journal can be so many different things. His lordship keeps journals of trips we take. I’ll bet your recipe journal is fascinating with all those notes in it. That’s a great idea. I never would have thought of that. Good job! And thanks for adding your thoughts!
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But that is all the more reason to keep a recipe journal….for those holidays where we are forced to be weekend gourmets and bake/create things we’d never do regularly….keep notes! if anything for the humor of it all!
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THAT made me laugh right out loud! Every note would say the same thing: My sister said, “What the heck IS this???” 😀
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When I did journal, my entries were definitely prayers. I am not so much one for journalling, though. Such records have always felt like I was leaving a paper trail that could be used against me in a court of law : ) For me, my writing is more like looking for sea glass … I set out on a leisurely walk and simply see what’s out there and what I might find and I bring home a pocketful of words, put them together, rearrange them a few times … and, on good days, I get lucky and they come together in a momentarily perfect way. I think the words are all out there flitting about our hiding in the sand and writers simply gather them up and write them down.
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What a beautiful description of the process. That’s me, too. Just whatever comes to mind. I had more “intent” when I was working through the book Something More. I’d read a short little essay, then respond to it in my journal for the day. I used all kinds of stickers to mark things as important. Especially dragonflies and STARFISH. For really important, life-changing moments, I used keys and toe shoes. All that so I could find important stuff easily in my journals. I DO like the idea of looking for SEA GLASS! There’s tons of symbolism with that. (I laughed at your comment about the paper trail. I don’t think there’s anything in any of my journals that I wouldn’t want people to read. Maybe that means I’m not being totally honest? Hm…)
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First, this was an excellent post! I have kept journals. Not always, but have several boxes full of hand written journals, which I actually wrote primarily when on retreat.
I started keeping a journal online , and also on my computer (the computer one because a big problem when one OS would call it quits, and I’d upgrade to a new OS and there was no compatible word program, thus lost all that writing. I stick with online, because it’s hopefully always going to be there, and now I do Vid journals.
I’m pretty sure, my vid journals are to myself from myself… because, I’m looking at myself. Hard to imagine I’m someone else at that point.
I tried to go back and look at my online journal to get a sense of who I’m writing to, but the site is down LOL… so much for that!
I think sometimes, it feels like a narrative to myself, or someone like me… maybe another part of myself. I know it’s NOT to my higher self, because my higher self already knows… Probably knows before I do.
Sometimes I get artsy (?) in my journaling, as if I’m writing narrative in a story, other times it’s whiney, complaining, bitching, etc… Maybe I’m ranting to the Universe?
BUT you’re post is VERY thought provoking. I’ll have to take a look when the site comes up and I see whose voice is there.
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If you were doing your journals on a site, why did you lose the stuff when you had to change servers? So what you’re saying is it’s like you’re writing to someone else, too?
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The online journals were the ones that got lost… due to differences in word doc programs. The onsite journal, down for maintenance so I’m hoping it’ll comeback. I’d actually begun, before last year, to copy those over to my current computer, but that took a back seat to other passions.
I think at times, it is like I’m writing to someone else. Not all the time, perhaps but sometimes, definitely.
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I keep TRYING online journals. But this is the closest I’ve ever come to being halfway successful and consistent. There’s just something about the physical contact with the pen, ink, and page that draws me. I’m a kinesthetic learner and I think I have to FEEL that paper beneath my hand for it to be really satisfying to my soul.
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I think I meant to say the on computer journals got lost. The online journals are good, as long as the site doesn’t go down. But I get what you’re saying about the pen on paper feeling more authentic. I like the vid journal to an extent, but that is still not the pen on paper thing.
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Lordy! I can’t imagine having to watch recordings of myself. I hate walkin’ by a bloomin’ mirror, for cryin’ out loud.
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I don’t like watching myself, or more to the point, I have a lot to complain about how I look a lot of the time. But it’s part of the banter I have with myself. LOL
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Well I hope the “two” of you will be very happy together! 😀
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Never journaled before. About my blog, I just wanted to write to (and about) someone who broke my heart. Let her feel my extreme sadness. Tell her what she still meant to me. Someone I knew wouldn’t read a real letter from me, but could have eventually stumbled upon my words while surfing on the web… Since the start of it many things have changed: mainly I lost hope and bitterness on the way, focusing on the pleasure of telling stories and interacting with some beautiful souls I’d have never hoped to meet. From a stale pain to a sort of fresh and unexpected sweetness. I don’t know if I can write, but I enjoy doing it. So I surely still write about myself, and maybe I still write about her and for her, but this is not an open letter anymore. Just my logbook. Cheers, HC
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There are so many people on here who start a blog for exactly that reason and I’ve heard the same story, that they discover something they really love to do, losing their original focus and intent in the process. There’s something so satisfying about telling your truth, getting it out there for the first time in a way you’ve maybe dared say before. When someone asks me why I journal I always say it’s so I can hear myself think! 😀 I’m so glad you’re finding joy in self-expression. I know I’ve sure enjoyed reading your writings. Carry on, dude! I look forward to hearing more! And thanks for stopping by.
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And you know, you’re right. I was REALLY surprised, too, to realize how much of a community it is here on the blogs. I think taking the Blogging 101 class and the Writing 101 class helped to give a sense of that. I’ve gotten to know so many people.
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I have never journaled but the question of who do I write to was a good one. I think I write to me from one place in me to another. When I write something that has some merit or that resonates with me it is almost like I am reading someone else’s work in a way. It seems to confirm or teach or encourage or chastise as it were. If I can look at it and hear a “Yes” it becomes a place if only temporarily to rest my feet on or to take the next step.
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Kind of like when a writing exercise says to write a letter from your older self to your younger self… I can see that with the process you’re going through. You have a gift at being able to differentiate all those parts of you. (Geez I wish I could get these comments in the right place the first time!!!)
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When it is good it like the me that is yet to come writing to them both.
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Clarity of purpose… Question is, when we write to ourselves that way, how seriously do we take our own advice? I’m not very good at that… I have to say, though, that your metaphor (?) of the tree and the tomato vine over on Plato’s Groove made a good picture. Sometimes I wonder what your work would LOOK like if you were a painter…
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The only advice i seem to really get is to chill out and just see what is. I tend to miss what is at times for trying to be something else.
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I guess that’s where we all need to learn to be a bit more observant? Of course that means slowing down enough to see what’s there. That’s where I have a problem. 😦
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Most of the time I have no idea of what I am going to write till it happens. That is coming from somewhere in me that is between intellect and emotion.
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Don’t you ever write out of one or the other specifically? Just feel something and write out of your emotions or try to get a point across and write out of your intellect? What does it feel like coming from that in between place?
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When its good, and a lot of its not, its not either. I’m surprised and appreciate it almost like someone else wrote it.
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Ok, now that I can identify with. I don’t know if something’s really good or not, but I know when it flows better than at other times. Though when I’m emotional in chaos stuff just comes out.
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