I started keeping a journal my junior year of high school, each of them since then all looking a little different, both in appearance and format, but all in all, I have completed nearly 15 fully bounded books to this point. The process has been somewhat inconsistent over the years, but there’s at least a few months of entries from each year of my life since I was 17.
The process of writing in journals is something that i’ve never reflected on much until the past couple of days. The (nearly) everyday ritual of taking the thoughts in one’s head that you may know or may not know exist and transferring those down to a piece of paper.
I’m sure everyone is different, but I’ve never actually done anything with those processed moments. The words sit on the pages, the pages sit in the journals, and the journals sit on shelves; I never actually go back and read any of the entries, and frankly, it’s a bit terrifying and possibly embarrassing to know what I’d find, especially inside the ones from high school.
It’s not until now that I’ve started reflected on journaling because up until this point in life, I’ve never needed to recall much from my past; however that’s changing. And the process is what I’d anticipated: terrifying and slightly embarrassing - both in what i’ve read from old entires and in how i’ve never gone back to read them. I think it points to a fear I’ve got that’s never been addressed.
I’ll let you place what that fear is and ask you, Do you have the same one?
-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Reading old thoughts is kind of like watching old home movies, except they’re movies of your mind that you yourself recorded and have let no one else see.