Back to Basics
So I have decided to go back to something that I left a long time ago. Well actually not really left, but I let it morph into something and now I must return back to what it was before the evolution. You know like way back, back to when birds swam as fish in the ocean and we were all black. What? I mean after all the cradle of civilization is where?
Anyway… back to this post. I have decided that I need to go back, back, back to journaling. I’m talking about way back, like Dear Diary back. Back before the internet was everywhere back to when I would chose pen to paper over the clickity clack of the computer keys HANDS DOWN to talk about my personal bidness. Back to when I wrote for me and it was as raw and gut wrenching and silly and indulgent as I wanted it to be, because ONLY I WOULD EVER READ THE PAGES, well unless pages were snooped or read with permission.
I have been writing for as long as I can remember and I have been journaling formally since I was about 12-13. Before that I did have a diary but I wasn’t too regular with it. After my aunt busted open the lock and read I liked my cross the street neighbor, JoJo! At seven I decided it was best I kept my secrets and thoughts in my head until I could A) find better hiding places for the written record of my life B) defend the snatching of my written life from my teenage aunties.
In my adolescence I began to journal. I would just write basic random stuff every girl writes. I never had any rules for what I could and could put in my diary. If I felt like drawing I did if I wanted to write about how I totally loved square headed Chad from a far, I did. I was a pretty good kid so my journaling for the most part was the stuff that wet cardboard is made of!
Anyway by the time I arrived back in Baytown from my Jr. High School stint in the H! I was a professional at journaling. I had loved to write almost as much as I loved to talk and I found that knocking ideas around in my head was not as good as looking at my thoughts in black and white. Sometimes I read them back to myself and thought silly, other times I read them and thought goofy, but most of the time I read them and thought me.
My high school years were quite different than most would think. I spent tons of time studying, taking creative writing classes, and having good, clean, Type A, overachiever fun! I was even on the staff of my high school literary magazine. Despite that I really had no desire to share my words more than the small amounts I measured out at a time. I mean I wrote prolifically in high school about everything. Where ever I went my handy journal was in tact. I remember spending painstaking time picking out the cloth covered journal that would be the next volume of my life. I felt each cover said as much about whom I was, as what I wrote inside. Then I grew up!
Well not exactly. Just for the record I am STILL doing that, even at 35. I went to college and my journal became where I went to show the work of my life. I worked through love, friendships, and heartache through my college years. The older I got the more my journal became a place to work out the feelings of inadequacy, fear, and longing we all have as human beings from time to time. Somewhere I realized I was only documenting the bad of my life and all the chops in my neck, so I also started to document the wins to my situations the dates to remember the moments in life that can only be described when you are actually experiencing them.
As I grew older, I still kept a journal, but the entries became few and far between. It seemed I was a life savant now, working the problems of my life in my head, no longer needing to carry the one and work out the solution using paper and pen to help me come to solutions for my life. Plus at the time my life seemed to be humming along pretty well. College Grad, decent job with great career options, good friends, and eventually a fiancé. My journaling was just for recording dates and sweet feelings of love, no problem solving needed there. Then once I got engaged my journaling turned into a to do list, wedding stuff, ideas for home decoration, fabric swatches for wedding dresses and drapes, entries about the house being built and the pre-marital counseling being taken, but still not working any of the problems I had out on paper, just in my head. As many of you know life’s problems are not the kind of problems one should be working out in his/her head. Not if we want to move and grow.
I started blogging in December 2004. My friend who works for MS told me they had a blog space and it was easy to set up and it was fun. I met people but really mostly I wrote. I wrote about whatever. Then my marriage ended not to long after that and I used my blog, all too publicly, to work out what it was like to move back to the single space. I tried to be as honest as I could with out giving too much of my business, but enough for people to see my change and metamorphosis.
I would get comments and e-mails of encouragement with people saying that they were glad I was sharing my highs and lows and they totally related. Thus a blogger was born, I think its funny I never wanted to be a journalist even when it was something that was suggested to me a few times in my Jr/Sr High School life, but I enjoy blogging. Maybe because there are no headlines and I don’t have to pitch what I want to write and all that jazz. As much as I love blogging and as much as it seems to have remained a constant in my life, for almost 4 years now, I do miss what journaling gave me.
Journaling gave me the complete freedom to write and be who I was because the most freeing factor to journaling is NO ONE is reading. You don’t have to watch your words or worry if your tone will offend. You don’t have to hope your cadence makes readers continue to read your LONG ASS blogs, all you have to do is just write. Just work it out and then my favorite part, read. I love to read my old journals they give me perspective on my life. I read about things at the time that I thought were dire, that I wouldn’t survive, that I couldn’t survive and I think wow, nothing is permanent. I think reading this set of journals will be different. I use to cyber-journal sometimes on my computer, however there’s nothing to read when your hard drive crashes or gets a virus or the file is corrupt. Nothing to read and put things back into perspective, the joys of 21st century life!
So now I think now is a good a time as any to pick one of those pretty little lined books up and begin to write about my life in a new city experiencing new things I want to journal about them, because some of them I can’t share with the masses, sorry y’all. I mean I suspect many journal entries will end up being blogs and maybe even vice versa and I expect that many journal entries will end up helping me make some of the harder decisions in my life. I really can’t wait to read what kinda crazy fun I had in Boston in the summer of ’08 even what kind of beauty I see as I experience seasons changing for real for the first time in my country azz Baytown life. Well I will be journal shopping for the next week or so and 6/1 I will begin journaling AGAIN! Thanks for letting me share about my new old secret past time. I promise you will see some things from the journal pop up here…no doubt!
Be EZ,
OG
Anyway… back to this post. I have decided that I need to go back, back, back to journaling. I’m talking about way back, like Dear Diary back. Back before the internet was everywhere back to when I would chose pen to paper over the clickity clack of the computer keys HANDS DOWN to talk about my personal bidness. Back to when I wrote for me and it was as raw and gut wrenching and silly and indulgent as I wanted it to be, because ONLY I WOULD EVER READ THE PAGES, well unless pages were snooped or read with permission.
I have been writing for as long as I can remember and I have been journaling formally since I was about 12-13. Before that I did have a diary but I wasn’t too regular with it. After my aunt busted open the lock and read I liked my cross the street neighbor, JoJo! At seven I decided it was best I kept my secrets and thoughts in my head until I could A) find better hiding places for the written record of my life B) defend the snatching of my written life from my teenage aunties.
In my adolescence I began to journal. I would just write basic random stuff every girl writes. I never had any rules for what I could and could put in my diary. If I felt like drawing I did if I wanted to write about how I totally loved square headed Chad from a far, I did. I was a pretty good kid so my journaling for the most part was the stuff that wet cardboard is made of!
Anyway by the time I arrived back in Baytown from my Jr. High School stint in the H! I was a professional at journaling. I had loved to write almost as much as I loved to talk and I found that knocking ideas around in my head was not as good as looking at my thoughts in black and white. Sometimes I read them back to myself and thought silly, other times I read them and thought goofy, but most of the time I read them and thought me.
My high school years were quite different than most would think. I spent tons of time studying, taking creative writing classes, and having good, clean, Type A, overachiever fun! I was even on the staff of my high school literary magazine. Despite that I really had no desire to share my words more than the small amounts I measured out at a time. I mean I wrote prolifically in high school about everything. Where ever I went my handy journal was in tact. I remember spending painstaking time picking out the cloth covered journal that would be the next volume of my life. I felt each cover said as much about whom I was, as what I wrote inside. Then I grew up!
Well not exactly. Just for the record I am STILL doing that, even at 35. I went to college and my journal became where I went to show the work of my life. I worked through love, friendships, and heartache through my college years. The older I got the more my journal became a place to work out the feelings of inadequacy, fear, and longing we all have as human beings from time to time. Somewhere I realized I was only documenting the bad of my life and all the chops in my neck, so I also started to document the wins to my situations the dates to remember the moments in life that can only be described when you are actually experiencing them.
As I grew older, I still kept a journal, but the entries became few and far between. It seemed I was a life savant now, working the problems of my life in my head, no longer needing to carry the one and work out the solution using paper and pen to help me come to solutions for my life. Plus at the time my life seemed to be humming along pretty well. College Grad, decent job with great career options, good friends, and eventually a fiancé. My journaling was just for recording dates and sweet feelings of love, no problem solving needed there. Then once I got engaged my journaling turned into a to do list, wedding stuff, ideas for home decoration, fabric swatches for wedding dresses and drapes, entries about the house being built and the pre-marital counseling being taken, but still not working any of the problems I had out on paper, just in my head. As many of you know life’s problems are not the kind of problems one should be working out in his/her head. Not if we want to move and grow.
I started blogging in December 2004. My friend who works for MS told me they had a blog space and it was easy to set up and it was fun. I met people but really mostly I wrote. I wrote about whatever. Then my marriage ended not to long after that and I used my blog, all too publicly, to work out what it was like to move back to the single space. I tried to be as honest as I could with out giving too much of my business, but enough for people to see my change and metamorphosis.
I would get comments and e-mails of encouragement with people saying that they were glad I was sharing my highs and lows and they totally related. Thus a blogger was born, I think its funny I never wanted to be a journalist even when it was something that was suggested to me a few times in my Jr/Sr High School life, but I enjoy blogging. Maybe because there are no headlines and I don’t have to pitch what I want to write and all that jazz. As much as I love blogging and as much as it seems to have remained a constant in my life, for almost 4 years now, I do miss what journaling gave me.
Journaling gave me the complete freedom to write and be who I was because the most freeing factor to journaling is NO ONE is reading. You don’t have to watch your words or worry if your tone will offend. You don’t have to hope your cadence makes readers continue to read your LONG ASS blogs, all you have to do is just write. Just work it out and then my favorite part, read. I love to read my old journals they give me perspective on my life. I read about things at the time that I thought were dire, that I wouldn’t survive, that I couldn’t survive and I think wow, nothing is permanent. I think reading this set of journals will be different. I use to cyber-journal sometimes on my computer, however there’s nothing to read when your hard drive crashes or gets a virus or the file is corrupt. Nothing to read and put things back into perspective, the joys of 21st century life!
So now I think now is a good a time as any to pick one of those pretty little lined books up and begin to write about my life in a new city experiencing new things I want to journal about them, because some of them I can’t share with the masses, sorry y’all. I mean I suspect many journal entries will end up being blogs and maybe even vice versa and I expect that many journal entries will end up helping me make some of the harder decisions in my life. I really can’t wait to read what kinda crazy fun I had in Boston in the summer of ’08 even what kind of beauty I see as I experience seasons changing for real for the first time in my country azz Baytown life. Well I will be journal shopping for the next week or so and 6/1 I will begin journaling AGAIN! Thanks for letting me share about my new old secret past time. I promise you will see some things from the journal pop up here…no doubt!
Be EZ,
OG
Comments
I also created a private blog that can be read by no one but me. Sometimes you need to sound off just as you say w/out anyone scoping you out.
Good luck and enjoy!
Cheers
When I got to high school, I started writing my own thoughts down from time to time. Anything from what happened at the ball game, to who looked hot walking down the hall. LOL
I didn't really write much after high school until the last five years or so. And now the last three years I've been a blogging machine. Plus the last two years I've been writing for pay.
Strangely, I see my writing for pay as practice for my own personal writings. Hell, one day I wanna write a book. I've actually already written 2/3rds of the story on 360.
But anyway, I really enjoy reading your thoughts. You've probably been one of my biggest blogging inspirations. Do what you do, and you'll be just fine!
i mean i have an actual pen and paper journal.
but the electronic way made my wrist hurt far less.
just as u said... the pen and paper allowed me to be alot more honest.
i may have to blow the dust off that boy.
one day
-1-
If it wasn't for you, I would have left the blogging world 2 years back. But by the grace of God, he had a plan to put positive,sweet young lady in my path that would put a very intense,effective energy in what I know today. I was so overjoyed when I bumped into your blog that I knew then if you EVER stopped blogging, the world would be sorry for it !
You are my inspiration for the blogging that I do. There are CERTAINLY more things that happen in my days that you will NEVER see in cyberspace because there is such a thing called "nobody's business". If someone knows me one on one offline, you'll understand the person that I really am.
Love ya...make it do what you do !