Journaling

Artist Statement: In this essay I reflect on the impact daily journaling has had on my life, and what it has brought into my life. With over six years documented in a small journal, writing down each day has shaped me into the person I am today. No longer is it just a meaningless book with some reflections in it, instead journaling has become an escape and also a place for revelations and gratitude to take hold. This piece examines how the art of writing daily has immensely impacted the way I view personal literacy and how we tell the stories of our days.

Where is the heart that doth not keep,

Within its inmost core,

 Some fond remembrance hidden deep

 Of days that are no more?”

-Ellen C. Howarth

 

2,190. For the last 2,190 days and counting I have penned out three to four lines about my day in my journal. Over these last six years, I have recounted my memories within my “One Line a Day” memory journals. The small, 4×6, bounded journals hold the highs and lows and every moment found in between.

On December 25th, 2012 I received my first five-year memory journal as a gift for Christmas from my parents. It was the winter of my eighth-grade year and I had written in a handful of journals, diaries and notebooks before, but nothing had lasted longer than a few weeks. I even remember signing my name at the bottom at one of my notebooks promising myself I would write every night but had quickly fallen through after a few hurriedly written entries. I had always been enamored by idea of having a keepsake journal that would act as a personal timeline and vault of my life. My Grandpa Dizard had written journals on his typewriter detailing his life on Staten Island with my Grandmother Charlotte and their four children. He recounted time as principal at P.S. 44, vacations over the summer out west, and the birth of all his grandchildren. Having passed when I was only two, his written words that were left behind were a way for me to hear his voice and conversations long after he was gone. So, when presented with my first journal, complete with “dairy entries for each day of the year recorded five times on each page”, I took up my pen and began.

Throughout the last six years my journal has become almost second-nature to me, and I hardly ever reflect on the impact it has had on my life or my literacy journey. When I first began the journal most of my entries were limited to a few sentences each, such as “Today was good!” or “Did well on my math test today.”. Although the daily spaces were small, I was still not basking in the opportunity to dig any deeper into my emotions or reflections of the day. However, after I had finished my first year and realized that I could stick to this “journaling thing”, I felt more comfortable sharing more about my day on paper. It was as if my relationship with this inanimate object was growing. Nobody really read the journal but me, yet there was still a vulnerability that came with openly writing about thoughts and feelings from each day. As 2014 rolled around, my passages grew a little longer and more personal. It was also the first year where I could view the entirety of last year’s entries. Seeing what I had written everyday exactly a year before began to reveal the meaning of the journal to me. This book was starting to become a personal timeline of my growth. I could begin to measure how I had grown by reading the 365 days of words I had written.

As the years rolled by, I became more aware of how much I valued my journal. Each night having it as a touchstone to come back to helped bring consistency into my life, even on days that felt hurried and messy. I knew that whenever I started to feel overwhelmed, I had my journal to go back to just like every other day before. The darkest nights and the brightest days all ended with communion with my journal. Journaling also brought immense gratitude into my life. By physically writing out my days I was creating a keepsake of all of life’s riches and grace that had come into my life. And even on the worst of days I was still grateful for the opportunity to write out my thoughts. I still hesitated writing out difficult days, fearing that if I wrote it out then it was actually true. Yet, I found this a faulty solution because even on the days where I just wrote a Bible verse or old quote from a movie (my signature way of getting out of writing about the day itself), I could still recall how I was feeling that day or what happened even years later. What I began to realize was that forfeiting the horrible days did not make them go away, but instead writing about them freed myself. Writing out what happened was a way for me to leave that day on the page and, literally, turn the page to a new day.

When asked to reflect on the impact that journaling has had on my life it’s hard to find the words that can do it justice. I know that if I could only save a few items from my house my journal would be one of them. It seems as if the journal has become a figure in my life who knows not only me but everything else going on in my life. Every time I write, I introduce to the page a new memory, person, place, emotion or revelation. Over the last six years and some pocket change the journal has seen me begin my first day of high school and graduate on the same grounds four years later, have my fist kiss on Rutherford Avenue and have my heart broken on West 27th Street, say teary goodbyes to my friends from home and meet some of the greatest people in New York, lose a classmate in a house fire and the grief that followed throughout a school, gain a sister through my brother’s marriage, travel overseas to visit family and walk down my own streets on evenings during sunset. All of this and more I captured in a small, seemingly meaningless book. But was it meaningless? Even though in twenty and thirty years nobody will be reading these journals as novels or newspapers, they are treasures in my life. I look forward to the new people and places and moments my journal will meet. One day, maybe even on the same pages I write on today, I will pen out my college graduation, my own marriage or the birth of my children. And until then, I will continue to write of this moment, because there is no other day than today.