I have a compulsive drive to write down everything about and around me in a journal. I tend to forget a lot of things, so the way that I remember things \u2013 be they names, French vo\u00adcabulary words, class notes, or things going on my life \u2013 is to write them down. Over time, by looking back on what I\u2019ve written, I have come to realize that what I do, think, and write has intrinsic value.<\/p>\n
My experience with journals has been varied. I\u2019ve received journals as birthday pres\u00adents or bought my own, written in the first few pages, and then stopped. Months later, I\u2019ve picked up the same journal and started again, only to stop. I began keeping a serious journal when I was fifteen, making a commitment to write at least two sentences every night for a month.<\/p>\n
When I first started out, I wrote in my journal so that I could feel good about myself. I was like a first-grader dutifully fin\u00adishing a sheet of homework, proud that I had done the simple task I was assigned. However, as time progressed, writing in my jour\u00adnal became more than that. I had days where I couldn\u2019t wait to write in my journal, and throughout the day I\u2019d think of little phrases or thoughts I\u2019d specifically want to include. My enthusiasm for writing in my journal got to the point where I stopped thinking about what I was doing and instead thought about how I was going to record it. Although the purpose of a journal is to record for oneself the pass\u00ading of time, events, and thoughts, the nature of the journal shouldn\u2019t be to write and forget to live.<\/p>\n
After the month was up, I kept going be\u00adcause I enjoyed writing, and I\u2019d reread what I had written and couldn\u2019t get enough of it. How\u00adever, as time went on I wasn\u2019t quite as con\u00adsistent about recording my thoughts and life events. I sporadically wrote in my journal for the next year and a half.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t realize the value of keeping a journal until the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. I went to France for three weeks with a program sponsored by my high school, and before the trip began, I made a commitment to write in my journal every night, (which I kept.) I stayed up all hours of the night in order to record everything I could remember about the day: what we had seen, how I had felt, what I had thought, how I was getting along with the other members on the trip. I slept less than my travelling companions, but I now have more than pictures to augment my memories of the trip.<\/p>\n
As I look back, that was my favorite time to write in a journal, as well as one of my favorite trips so far. We spent three weeks travel\u00adling the country, swimming in lakes and rivers, visiting French monuments and theme parks, spending a week\u00adend with a host family, and overall having a good time. However, there were occurrences that I\u2019d rather forget, but nevertheless made it into the journal such as the journey back home when we missed our connecting flight and returned home a day and a half later than expected.<\/p>\n
Six months after my trip to France, I finished my journal. It was an auspicious event; it was the first journal I finished that had more than eighty pages. When I finished the last page and turned over the cover, I felt part of some\u00adthing larger. Like the journal, I was complete. And not only had I accomplished something, I had done it completely for myself. A part of me rested in those pages. And afterwards, I real\u00adized that I had found a source of self-worth, of wholeness, of confidence. The events of my life, hand-written in that journal, were striking, my perspective on them was important, and I realized for myself that I was beautiful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have a compulsive drive to write down everything about and around me in a journal. I tend to forget a lot of things, so the way that I remember things \u2013 be they names, French vo\u00adcabulary words, class notes, or things going on my life \u2013 is to write them down. Over time, by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,234],"tags":[69,147,25,148],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-perspective","category-vol-1-issue-1","tag-france","tag-journals","tag-liz-lyon","tag-writing"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}