Something to Write About

I have been keeping journals since sometime around the 5th/6th grade. My record keeping was spotting at best and mostly consisted of who my best friends were at the time, which boys I had a crush on, and how, like all kids that age, I thought I was popular and pretty dang cool [but seriously, I actually was! :)]. As I got older is started writing more. My entries continued to consistent of boys, friends, school and eventually of band and my church youth group. I will admit that I don't always like to look back and read about what I was like then. Although it is nice to see how much I have changed over the years and know [or at least hope] I am not the same person. My entries now are mostly about my daughter, my workouts, my husband, and just the basic happenings in my life, which honestly isn't too much considering I'm a stay-at-home mom and we don't get out much.

But over the years, over the past 15 years or so to be more exact, I have been keeping track of my life. I have been documenting all the good moments and revealing all those little secrets that I would be embarrassed if anyone were to read about even now. I have been writing about my frustrations. I have been writing about my anger. I have been just writing about my life. It's nothing too exciting. They will never be published. They will never be read by anyone outside the family - heck, they may not even read by even my own family. But writing has been important to me. It has been a way for me to get things off my mind. It's been a way to reveal things that I want to reveal but may not be brave enough to reveal to an actual person.

And honestly as much as I sometimes get embarrassed by my past self and some of my thoughts, I actually really enjoy looking back at what was important to me. What I thought about. Who I was as a person. I have memories written down that I would never remember otherwise and how I never kept all my journals, had I never wrote anything down, I would never have those. I would never have those moments that make me laugh thinking back, have those memories that make me cringe, have those words that that make sad. And no matter how reading those journals make me feel - sad, depressed, happy, embarrassed - I would much rather have them than not.

So although I reveal a lot of our lives on this blog, which has been amazing to have for the past four years, there is so much more that no one will ever know about me that is written in the pages of those journals. And that's exactly where some of those memories, thoughts, and feelings will stay. So do I recommend writing? Definitely. You might be surprised by how freeing it is to write about your life, to remember things [and you'll be especially glad when you one day go back and read and remember all those things you had long ago forgotten], and truly be exactly who you are without any censorship at least for those few moments you write about your anger, depression, happiness, frustration, embarrassment, joy. So yeah, I definitely recommend writing. I don't know where I would be without it.