Moleskines and Pixels: How Journaling Shapes Me
I would like to start this post by telling you that I have faithfully kept a journal since I was a young lad, ensuring each and every day that I penned (and eventually typed) my thoughts on the page, preserving my opinions, ideas, inspirations, and pearls of wisdom for future generations to decipher as they wish.
I would like to tell you that. But I can’t.
Don’t get me wrong—I actually do have journals and diaries from when I was very young. So I did, in fact, preserve some of my thoughts, opinions, ideas, yada yada. It’s just that it was far from daily, and far from consistent. In fact, there were entire months.... nay, years... in which I wrote not a word. I have dozens, maybe even hundreds of journals that were begun and then abandoned. Thoughts, isolated on the deserted islands of notebooks that are more blank pages than filled.
My great shame.
Although, to give myself at least some credit, I may not have been consistent in the daily practice but I was very consistent in the coming-back practice. I came back to those pages eventually. In fact, I’d say at least half the entries I wrote between the age of sixteen and circa 35 are along the lines of, “I’m sorry I haven’t kept up this journal, but I’m going to do better this time.” Then, six months to a year later, “Yeah... me again. Sorry.”
There are actually long stretches in my journals in which I did write daily, or at least weekly, for months. Some journals have gaps of months in them, but the months with words are pretty consistent.
I didn’t really develop a true, ongoing discipline with journaling until a few years ago, really. Already in my 40s, and trying to reshape my life so that it looked as I really wanted it to look. I have certainly taken to journaling as a habit, at this point. I write daily. And the days I don’t write are dark days indeed—I get grumpy.
My wife, Kara, saintly and patient as she is, has picked up on this. She now realizes that if I’m not writing daily, then I’m not so fun to be around. And so she is often the one gently coaxing me back to routine. “Go do your morning thing,” she says. And I go and I do and I feel better and act better.
Journaling may have been an on-again-off-again habit in my life, but looking back at entries past, I can see how much it benefited me. I’m so very grateful that I kept it up, even sporadically. I long to read what would have been on those empty pages, but I’m grateful for those that are filled.
At various points I have attempted to migrate away from handwritten journals and use only digital journals. I’ve used a variety of methods for journaling on computers over the years, most of which weren’t all that conducive to keeping me in the habit. But I have files on my hard drive that represent several years worth of typed entries that I should, some day, transfer over to Day One (my preferred digital journal app). Just as I have always thought that some day I should digitize my handwritten journals.
Neither of these things is likely to happen.
Not because I wouldn’t love having all those entries in one place, searchable and sortable, tagged for easy reference. But mostly because it’s just too impractical for me to pursue the endeavor. Maybe someday I’ll hire someone, and pay that poor soul to sift through all those entries, type them up, photograph the sketches and the doodles and the diagrams, document everything I sort of documented as I went.
But probably not.
The thing is, journaling is useful to me, as a writer, more because it’s something other people probably aren’t going to read. It’s therapeutic. It’s a way for me to look back and mark my growth and progress as a human.
I have a rule—write everything as if someone is eventually going to read it.
It’s a bit like the old wisdom about guns: “Never point a gun at someone unless you plan to shoot them.” As well as “treat every gun as if it’s loaded.” Which, I think you’ll agree, is a much more humane way to teach someone to respect guns as dangerous weapons.
Still... if you’re going to point a gun...
If you’re going to write...
It’s best to treat the things you do as meant for something.
In the case of journaling, maybe the reader you’re writing for will only ever be you. But that’s enough, isn’t it?
This morning, as I opened my Moleskine to do my daily journaling, the notebook opened to July 4th and 5th. I read the entries there, and it turned out they were relevant to everything I was thinking about this morning. They even included advice, and it was of the sort I sorely needed in that moment.
My past self advised my present self on precisely what I most needed to hear.
As I read those entries, I remembered what I was feeling when I wrote them, what I was struggling with and what was making me feel hopeful. I thought, “You haven’t seen anything yet,” which is the arrogant way our present self always thinks about our past self. And the way our future self is thinking about the “I” that we are today. It’s easy to look back at who you were and be critical.
But it’s better to look back and recognize your own wisdom.
Because think about it—you were so ignorant of what was to come, but you got through it anyway. That takes something. It takes courage. It takes strength and capability.
Some of the entires in this particular Moleskine are a little somber, sometimes sad, sometimes a little hopeless. This one started in February 2021, smack in the middle of a polar vortex that knocked out power for Texans and left us freezing in our own homes. My entries from those days are a little bitter and angry and hopeless, but there are also notes of, “Maybe this is God’s way of saying there’s something incredible coming next.”
I read that and realized, yeah, it was. And it is.
I keep handwritten journals and I keep digital journals. I keep multiple journals, to accommodate various parts of my life. I have spent a lot of time fretting that I might not be journaling “correctly.” But I’m finally starting to realize—it’s up to me, and it’s all correct. If it helps, if it allows me to see who I am and shape who I become, then it’s the right way.
Journaling has given me incredible insights and remarkable resolve. It has given me hope when I felt hopeless, and it has allowed me to shape myself into someone better than I was, to grow into being someone more like the man I want to be.
Journaling, in fact, has led to this blog—an extension of the same part of my mind that writes exclusively for me. Each of these posts starts first in my journal, aimed at my ideal reader (me), and then given to you, whom I hope will also become my ideal reader.
Journaling gives me a way to tell you that I appreciate you, and that I am grateful you’re here. And it allows me to say, “Welcome. Let’s go on some adventures together.”
YOU ARE READING SIDE NOTES
Side Notes is an extension of my Notes at the End, which are author’s notes that appear at the end of every one of my novels. If you like these posts, you’ll love the books.
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