Journaling the Journey

"Dear Diary: Today was a boring day. We had tuna casserole for supper and then I watched Bonanza. Little Joe is cute. but not as cute as Dr. Kildare." Well, I wrote something like that in my first diary. It was 1960 and I was ten years old at the time and hardly a budding Anne Frank. But I did keep writing about my life over the years, picking up in 1963, where I wrote pages....and pages...of declarations of love for the Beatles. I wrote in large, cheap, unlined scrapbooks from Woolworth's so I could glue pictures of them next to my predictable, poorly penned text. I tended to end each day's record with a hearty "Yay, Beatles!" By 1966 I was in full teen angst, complaining about parents and siblings, my weight, my hair, and my buck teeth, or discussing school events and gossip from my friends, and still carrying on about the Beatles, where it was important to establish which of my friends liked which Beatle so there was a nice balance and no jealousy.

                                                      (No penmanship awards for me.)

Then there's a whole embarrassing box in the attic full of my college journals that I am afraid to read and just as afraid to throw away. More angst, unrequited love, friendship dramas, etc. ratcheted up a few degrees in emotional pitch. I only seemed to write when I was in full hysterical mode over something that now seems distant and puzzling. When I was in a less manic/depressive mode my college roommates would beg me to read from my ramblings, as if I were reading them a good night story, only they were characters in the story as well. I turned my misery into entertainment. I highly recommend it.  But not everyone likes to record the minutiae of their lives (except those excessive Tweeters). There are long stretches in my own when I didn't say much. I was either busy raising my children or my angst level was suitably maintained. Eventually I reached that transition in my life when I didn't want to write when I was sad, or distraught, or raving, I wanted to write when I was calm and happy. It was hard to be glib, witty, and sarcastic, a state I love being in, when I was stewing over something, although it's a great form of therapy. Sometimes reading a page from 1964, or 1973, or 1994, I  cringe in horror, but other times I surprise myself with my insights, as if I were reading a stranger's writings, and I realize that I haven't changed in many ways from that ten year old who first thought life was an interesting enough journey to record the process. There's a continuous thread of personality that is almost reassuring despite better teeth now and much more confidence. This blog is itself another form of continuing that journaling process. And in this blog I am, surrealistically, not only journaling about journaling, but in this sentence I am journaling about journaling about journaling. Wait, what? Oh and, Yay Beatles!