It seems like everyone on the internet is buzzing about journals lately. A few of my favorite bloggers have been referencing passages from their middle school diaries - one even published a book about it. I never kept a diary. I would journal from time to time, but I don't possess any heart-wrenching, anxiety-inducing series of diaries from the era in which I discovered my own bershon.
This means, of course, that I have no literary documentation of my own life's significant moments. Moments like:
- my first kiss
- my sixteenth birthday
- my ever-changing pool of Jr. High friends
- my keychain collection
- my ridiculous 12-year old crushes
- my first dance recital
- my time on the elementary school percussion line
- my first supporting role in a musical
And I have to admit that I'm somewhat disappointed by all of this navel gazing - mostly because I can't do it myself. The kicker is, I had such a great childhood! It was relatively free of any kind of trauma (emotional, physical or otherwise) and now I feel as if it all just kind of slid past me, the way butter slides off a hot knife. I definitely didn't hit my overly dramatic peak until college - some journals exist from that time period which, quite frankly, need to be promptly located and burned.
The trouble is, journaling is inherently bittersweet. One gets that sense of memory - the vivid recollection, the emotions, the picture in my head, the song that was playing when...and, on the other hand, looking back can be embarassing and/or painful. In not keeping a consistent journal, I have both denied myself the luxury of documented past events and protected my own ego from things I woulda/could/shoulda done differently (or not at all).
Maybe someday I'll hunt down those little 6X9 notebooks that existed intermittently throughout my adolescence (assuming I even kept them) and read them with a big glass of wine nearby. Until then, I'm content to keep this little journal here on the web.
This means, of course, that I have no literary documentation of my own life's significant moments. Moments like:
- my first kiss
- my sixteenth birthday
- my ever-changing pool of Jr. High friends
- my keychain collection
- my ridiculous 12-year old crushes
- my first dance recital
- my time on the elementary school percussion line
- my first supporting role in a musical
And I have to admit that I'm somewhat disappointed by all of this navel gazing - mostly because I can't do it myself. The kicker is, I had such a great childhood! It was relatively free of any kind of trauma (emotional, physical or otherwise) and now I feel as if it all just kind of slid past me, the way butter slides off a hot knife. I definitely didn't hit my overly dramatic peak until college - some journals exist from that time period which, quite frankly, need to be promptly located and burned.
The trouble is, journaling is inherently bittersweet. One gets that sense of memory - the vivid recollection, the emotions, the picture in my head, the song that was playing when...and, on the other hand, looking back can be embarassing and/or painful. In not keeping a consistent journal, I have both denied myself the luxury of documented past events and protected my own ego from things I woulda/could/shoulda done differently (or not at all).
Maybe someday I'll hunt down those little 6X9 notebooks that existed intermittently throughout my adolescence (assuming I even kept them) and read them with a big glass of wine nearby. Until then, I'm content to keep this little journal here on the web.
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