Reading Old Entries

About three months before we opened up shop, I spent some time going through old journals.  I started out looking for the journals I liked the best so I could contact the manufacturer.  I ended up on the floor, surrounded by memories, laughing and crying and generally having a great time.

Not all journals are meant to be kept.  There are periods of time in my life when anger was volatile and circumstances designed to push my buttons were a daily occasion.  I have a few notebooks full of anger.  The catharsis for me was in the venting, in the writing down.  I burned the journals, unopened, a year later.

The nine to twelve notebooks I filled up over the loss of a relationship and a violent physical act I suffered are still in a box in the attic.  The relationship was not a healthy one.  The attack was emotionally damaging.   I have no desire to torture myself again by reading those journals.  When they come down from the attic, they will get burned.

The journals I wrote in while working with Dr. Frank Bell are ones I will keep forever.  They chronicle the transition from working to being…the flowering open of my hopes, dreams, and career aspirations.  His counseling as a boss and mentor were priceless to me and opened up so many new ideas and possible roads, I can’t bear to part with the record of that portion of my journey.

I keep my prayer journals and the journals in which I recorded study, insights, and growth.

As more and more of my journaling makes it into electronic media, I’m not certain if my paper journals will continue to be as prolific as they have been for years.  So much of my private world finds its way into my blog and the E-Zine that I write less on paper in a personal way.  I still do, but my 140 page monthly quota now encompasses all I do for the company as well as personal writing.  There simply isn’t enough time in the day to keep up both.  The articles and blog do satisfy my need to put my thoughts into words and exercise the writing muscle, so I’m not driven to my journal quite as much as I was a year ago.  However, nothing can replace pen on paper for me and I still write a minimum of five pages a day by hand.

My old journals serve as a source of inspiration for article ideas, especially since I began taking my research notes in them about six months ago.  Zotero and Clipmarks are a great add-on to my research, but the seeds and kernels of ideas still appear from my pen.

How are you using your old entries?  Do you burn your journals or keep them?  How often do you go through them and use the words in them?

Decision-Making Through Journaling

Journaling has always been a key element in my decision-making process.  The more difficult or complex the decision, the more journaling helped me find my way.  Decisions that have too many variables usually trap me in a quagmire of “what if.”  Journaling is my shortcut out of the morass.

In the past six years, I have journaled about the decision to move from Oregon to Tennessee.  I spent time talking to my journal about deciding to form a relationship with the man who became my husband.  I spent two full journals deciding what I wanted to do with my life after an illness almost took it from me.  In each case, the insights and concerns revealed through the journaling process helped me to be content with each decision made, even if it didn’t turn out the way I had hoped or the results are not yet in.

If the decision is a major one, such as a cross-country move, it can take some time.  Every day, for as many hours as it takes and as many days as it lasts, I will explore the decision in my journal.  Basic pro and con lists start me off.  If I still feel conflicted or concerned, I follow the road of one choice as far as I am able, then another option, and so forth. Every day I will write myself out on the topic.

The benefits of this process are logical as well as emotional.  Giving yourself freedom to really dive in to what the future might bring can reveal hidden issues and motivations.  It also brings clarity. This allows you to apply logic to your intuition and emotions by reading what you have written and examining your words critically.

The evolving process allows an emotional adjustment to the outcome.  Getting your feelings AND your thoughts on paper in continual fashion allows fears to subside as well.

Toward the end of this process, which could take an hour or a year depending on the scope of the decision, your reasoning and your reactions come together in a cohesive whole.  You are able to say “this is my decision.  It is best because…”  You will find great peace then as you move through and beyond the decision to be made and be comforted in the knowledge that you examined all sides and decided what was right for you.

B J Keltz

http://www.writeyourmindjournals.com