I'm A Journal Junkie

I am trying to remember exactly when I began to keep a journal & I feel like I was practically born journaling! I still have a few fat little diaries that locked shut with the tiniest golden key. I was probably about 8 or 9 & I loved them so much, filling them up, even writing around the edges of pages to fit all my thoughts & wonderings onto paper.

Later I moved on to large spirals & I still have a stack of those somewhere in my garage. Oh the drama! I like him, but he likes her & she likes some other him. There are even some mentions of the skinny long haired blond guy that became my hubby many years later!

After High School there is a bit of a gap as working, dating & marriage consumed me & then a true "Blank Book" journal was purchased the day after I found out that I was pregnant with our first son. I wrote letters to him telling him how happy we were to finaly know that he was coming to us. (It took us 4 years to get pregnant.) That same journal became his baby book in many ways because I continued it into his infancy & up till Pre-school.

The habit was strong & I have always had a journal going ever since then, 26 years of "real" journals are stacked in my closet. One for each of the boys & my own personal ones. The picture above is a small portion of my collection. Those are the early ones which were very floral-ish compared to the more beautiful ones I use now.

Just inside the front cover of my childhood diary are some rules that I created for myself. (First born!) Mainly the rules were about writing every single day or else! Not sure what "or else!" meant but I was being very firm with myself! Ha!

Now I have one true rule: There are no rules! I write whenever, about whatever I want! That freed me up & made it such a pleasure to express myself in a safe place. Someimes I actually feel like an event did not really finish happening to me until I have written about it! Is that weird? Do any of you feel that way?

Now I am beginning to wonder if they should be left for my family after I die or should I think about destroying them. There is some pretty hard & harsh things in there, but it's all true. And sometimes when I look over them I am pleased with the way they show my whole life & the thoughts & questions I had as I lived it. There are a lot of prayers in there too & it's pretty cool to see the answers as the pages go by. Not that I am planning on leaving anytime soon though!

Now blogging seems to be replacing my journal entries & that concerns me. After all, these blog posts are not as permanent as a leather book full of ink. But I still carry my current journal with me every day & it is still my favorite place of collecting thoughts, questions & rants. I am completely honest in there & it can reveal my selfishness & jealousies pretty clearly. Which makes me often wish that it still came with a tiny golden key!