Journaling – I Get It Now

I'm one of those people who always thought keeping a journal would be a great thing to do, but could never actually do it.  I'd make plenty of attempts to start a journal – usually after some other compelling event had occurred like starting a new job, the calendar changing over to January 1, or even just receiving a nicely bound book filled with blank pages as a birthday gift.  I would write my first entry, admiring the pristine pages and the striking contrast of my handwritten words across them, and vow to return the next day with further insights.  Never did these efforts at recording my current history last more than one week.

Then in January 2008, my wife, daughter, and I relocated from Los Angeles to the Upper Midwest.  I'd been born and raised there, had moved out to LA after meeting my wife on a vacation, and we wound up marrying and living blissfully in the land of endless summer for ten years.  After our daughter was born, we decided to return to the Midwest to raise her around family and friends, a place where childhood lasts longer than in LA. 

So no problem – I found a job, we packed up, and we moved.  My last day at my former job was on a Wednesday, I flew out of LA the next day, and started my new job in Wisconsin the following Monday.  And, after less than one week, I began to write a journal.

Shockingly, 18 months after I started this new job, it was eliminated as my employer blundered its way through the financial crisis.  What was shocking wasn't that I got laid off; it was that eighteen months later, I was still keeping my journal.

I started a new job this week, 21 months after being shown the door at the last one.  After I was laid off, I also stopped keeping the journal.  Instead, I wrote several short stories, "Flesh Wound", and this blog. 

In the two weeks after I accepted my current job offer but before my start date, I went back and re-read the journal I kept during my brief tenure at my old employer.

It was fascinating.

There were a lot of things going on in my life at that time.  The relocation from a moderate climate to a winter climate in January; starting a new job after 9+ very successful years at the old one; helping my wife and 2 ½ year old daughter acclimate to the move, and missing very badly the city of Angels which I had come to love, and where so many good things had happened for me.

I drew two conclusions from re-reading my journal.  One, I was amazed by how many things had happened during that time, and what I was thinking and feeling about them, that I'd forgotten.  Things at work, sure, but also what it was like to have a 2 ½ year old.  The lack of sleep, the diaper changes, the general relentlessness of the demands of raising a small child.  Reading the journal brought those things back vividly, and I found myself appreciating my now-5 ¾ year old daughter all over again.

Second, life overall was very challenging for me at that time, and I was having a difficult time personally adjusting to all of the life changes that were happening at once.  And that is why this particular effort at journaling, I think, continued for me for such a long time.

The main purpose the journal served for me was to provide a vent for the sometimes turbulent emotions of adapting to a difficult change in my life.  And you know what?  It helped.

I know that many therapists recommend that their patients keep journals for this very reason.   Presumably, if one is seeing a therapist regularly, one is trying to deal with some issue in one's life that is bothering them enough to seek help.  I understand that now in a way I didn't before.  I also think that is why I stopped journaling when my job ended.  I knew I was going to start pursuing something I'd always wanted to do – writing a novel – and I was optimistic and enthusiastic about doing it.  The continuing source of irritation that had led to starting the journal in the first place – my new and ultimately toxic job – was gone. 

Now that I've started my new job, I'm surprised at what a difference working for a good company with good people makes to one's overall satisfaction with life.  Do I miss writing full-time?  Only every day.  But I got paid today, and I must say, that has some very, very attractive qualities.  Will I keep writing?  Sure.  I'm writing right now.  But I don't think I'll be writing a journal.  This blog will be the closest I get.  I still have my second novel to finish.

I hope you have a great week!  Thanks for reading. -Jon