Writing a Journal

I started writing a journal in 1989. It was extra credit for an English class in junior college. I wrote in a small wire notebook. I was writing for an audience (my teacher) so I was careful about what I wrote. I dutifully turned it in a the end of the semester, and I believe I was the only one to submit a journal that year. But I was glad I did, since it raised me a full grade: C+ to a B+! You might not guess it from my original C average but by the time I transferred to a UC I was an “A” student.

I kept a journal from 1989 until about 2002, the year before I got married. There were many times when I almost abandoned the journal, for a seeming lack of interesting things to write about. But I was in the habit of writing down all of my most vivid and symbolic dreams. And after long periods of not writing, I frequently started back up because of some interesting dream that I had to write down.

So I started reading my journals a few months ago. And based on my experiences, I have a few suggestions for anyone considering starting a journal:

1) Don’t be bound to dating every entry. Each journal I wrote was dated in such a way: May 1990 – August 1990. That gave me the freedom to write about things that happened a week prior and to not feel bound by the particular day I was writing. Each journal represented an era of my life.
2) Include dreams. Not everyone has a lot of vivid dreams. But writing down dreams was what made me return to journaling after months of not writing. Also, ten years later, when you read your dreams in context to that particular era of your life, those dreams will most likely make more sense.
3) Include news events. I wish I had written or saved clippings of more news events.. But it was funny to read so many years later about how my friends were all watching OJ Simpson trying to run away in his white Bronco, and what sort of comments my friends were making. Don’t take for granted that this is history in the making. Sure, you were glued to the TV when Anna Nicole Smith died. Fifteen years from now, though, you might find it interesting to read and to recall what a huge media blitz it was.
4) Note new technology. The day we got our first TV with a remote control. The first time I got a job working on a computer. The first time I got a cell phone –and felt so pretentious using it in public! The first time I used dial up to get on the internet, and there were so few images because they took so dang long to load! Ten or fifteen years later, you’ll read over those moments and realize “Oh my Gosh! I forgot that we didn’t have that before!”
5) Make an effort to capture dialogue and the essence of what other people believe. I don’t think anyone can capture dialogue with exact precision, unless you use a recorder. But make some effort. If anything try to capture the essence of what other people believe. Trust me, those are things that are so fascinating to read years later. Every decade individual philosophies are shaped by events and popular books. In the mid ‘90s I came across quite a few people influenced by The Celestine Prophecy. Ten years later, a terrorist attack, a war, and people are consumed with different ideas now.
6) Don’t skimp of descriptions of what people look like or how they dress. Again, it’s easy to take for granted that you’ll never forget how someone looks or the fashions of the day. But you forget, and fashions change so quickly.