By all rights, my journal should have died. I declared that it did last month and was fine with that decision. But it ultimately refuses to.
This blog can’t replace it. I tried to have it do so but I failed. That’s because a journal serves an altogether different purpose. My fictional writing can’t relegate it to redundancy either.
I’m glad I didn’t throw out my notebooks last month because I found that I actually needed to write again. I really didn’t want to resurrect the series but I had some issues I needed to deal with. I had a hard time writing in my journal again because it felt like, in writing, it would become all the more real. It’s already much too real.
But I have written pages and pages since then and it has been very therapeutic.
The reason I wrote so many pages was that I hadn’t really written much in it at all this year. I had to tell what had happened in the past five months. I knew it would take a lot of time and effort. But it needed to be done and I was able to do it somewhat concisely.
I use my journal writing not so much to record my thoughts but to actually figure out what my thoughts are saying. I’ve always been able to talk things through and come up with insights through speech. Writing works much the same way. It is a process that is tied to thinking. Maybe it is even part of the process.
That being said, I hope that no one else ever reads my personal words again.
My blog is for everyone but my journal is just for me.
It helps me figure things out. It helps me remember things as well. It serves a purpose.< That is why my journal has been reborn.