Changing the Way I Journal After Ten Years
I mentioned in my latest Monthly Log that I've changed how I journal this year, and that I might write about it someday. Today's the day.
Last year I was keeping three journals: my usual Hobonichi Day Free, a 5-Year Techo Book (also from Hobonichi) and a Dragon Quest Habit Tracker. I'm not counting the additional casual stuff like all the notebooks in which I keep separate brainstorming processes, or where I take notes about music or language learning. This is strictly about my daily life.
The habit tracker was cute, but an additional notebook just to track the usual 4 habits really is an overkill. I'm much happier now that I track everything in my Hobonichi, it's much more flexible.
The 5-Year... I'd be at my fourth year now, if I kept at it. Thing is, it's never been a hassle until recently, and that's the core of what I'm addressing now, and why I changed how I journal after so many years.
When I first got my 5-Year Techo Book, I thought: "I've journaled for 5 years now pretty much consistently, I think I can handle something like this now". I did, and it was great! Comparing the same day across years, recalling birthdays and nice days together... it was possible because I had a very strict rule when journaling: don't write anything you can't show someone else. I didn't write about my anguishes, because I didn't want to read about them. It's very easy to just wallow in sadness and forget about the good things; journaling helped me immensely because even in my darkest hour it reminded me that I was able to feel happiness, and those moments didn't disappear when I felt disheartened. They stayed, and I had proof. It's why I came to love journaling so much.
There were some entries in which you could still see a glimpse of it.
"Today was tiring, but I did this!"
Events recorded with a huge chunk missing because it involved something that I was angry about, and I'd rather not have focused on it. Few scattered, late entries in which I was angry about something, vaguely addressed as "I really don't like to write about this, but I'm at my limit" and then that's it. Mentioning it because lying to myself any longer was too painful, but nothing more than that. Can't dwell on the negative feelings. Must be positive. Keep at it. Negative just builds up negative.
I was journaling for someone else I didn't even show my writing to.
Reading old entries became unbearable, because the page didn't show my anguishes, but I remembered them vividly. I could see how much I was lying to a possible reader, but most especially to myself as I was writing it. I hated it, and writing became difficult because I had to put in effort to write something that seemed nice, when I wasn't feeling exactly nice. Last year's entries are scattered, tired and vague. I speak of people in ways that are deeply disconnected with how I felt in the moment, and today it feels like an alternate reality that never happened. It's a mirror of how I lived through it all, so in a sense it's not exactly a lie; it's still painful, though.
When I was a child, I could never keep a diary for more than a couple of weeks: as soon as I skipped one entry, it felt like I had failed. If I wrote something that I didn't like some time later, I felt the urge to tear all pages off and start over. I could never let the past be such and accept it without judgement, I had to erase it if it wasn't perfect for the present me. This changed when I bought my first Hobonichi Techo in 2014 and came across this quote from Shigesato Itoi himself:
"We sell the Hobonichi Techo as a finished product, but it's not really complete until it's been used for the whole year. So go ahead... use it as much as you like. Some pages may end up blank, or you might take a break; a year is a long time. Even if you forget to write on some days, you can just pick it up and start writing again. So give this intermittent story of your life to your future self."
Coincidentally, I had to look back into my 2014 entries to find this exact quote again. They're embarrassing, but I've been that person at some point in my life and I can't erase her just because I'm different now. I'm no longer the kid that can't accept a past that's different from what she deems acceptable.
Or am I?
Didn't I end up only writing things I wouldn't dislike reading again? Sanitizing not just my writing, but my own thoughts too to make them align with what I considered good and proper? It seems I managed to become someone who journals and enjoys doing so, but I never truly grew out of the thing that held me back in the first place. Blank pages hid a story, they didn't tell one. I think it's fair not to want to write down everything and avoid writing about painful things, but the way I actively lied to myself to try and "fake it till you make it" ended up hurting me more than it helped. I don't want to journal like that anymore.
This year's interview to Itoi was a very good read, and it also had this very timely segment:
"It’d be trite to say something like “I use the Hobonichi Techo because I love myself,” but there are people out there who don’t love themselves and are suffering, or who are feeling lonely. It’s hard to love yourself. And I think starting a techo is often an act of self love."
I want to be someone able to love herself for who she is and not for who she tries to be. I've been writing a lot more negative thoughts in my diary ever since the start of the year: "This is pissing me off!", "I feel like crap...", "I'm so tired, it's disheartening", "I'm scared! I'm really scared!". But I'm also writing down "I gotta tell them, and do so clearly!", "I'll rest today, can't do much else", "Oh, I've done this and that, that's why I'm tired!", "Why am I scared? I'll write it down so it seems smaller". I'm looking at myself in the mirror for who I am. Only then I can choose a path to take. I can't do that just by blindly pushing forward, refusing to face myself and who I'm surrounded by.
It's a tricky balance, and I can't show my pages to anyone anymore. But I've never had this much fun and joy journaling!