I’ve kept journals in the past – as recently as the beginning of this year. It made me feel calm to write in it, but neurotic at the same time, as if writing down what was going on in my life made it all come into greater focus and I had to analyze each detail. The whole point of journalling is that I love the sound of words. I wanted to be writing narratives, writing for the pleasure of crafting sentences. Instead, my journal became a rant, a whine against everything going wrong (or occasionally a girlish sigh at the things going right). Worse off than the advice column of Seventeen! magazine, because I couldn’t give myself any more advice than endlessly circling the paths I’d chosen or neglected.
My hope, this time, is to avoid self-analysis where possible and just write for the joy of it. Tomorrow is Dec. 1 and I love beginnings like that. We’ll see how it goes.
