I’ve always had a journal for as long as I can remember.
My earliest memory of a journal was back in third grade. We were tasked with keeping a diary as a requirement for one of my classes. Each section was assigned a color for their diary covers: my section was yellow. I wrote about my daily life — I remember writing about that one time when a man picked up a dropped twenty-peso bill in front of me on the street. I don’t remember the exact details anymore — if the twenty pesos were mine or his — but I remember feeling anxious. It’s true what they say: you don’t remember the exact details of an experience, but you remember how you felt when it happened.
When I finally had access to the internet when I was in my fifth to sixth grade, I started a LiveJournal. For many years, I wrote on my journal religiously, talked about everything that happened in my life, chronicled every detail about every event. I didn’t want to miss anything. I dropped names, wrote about happenings in my life as if I was writing a detailed report. (In retrospect, I’m glad that I journalled the way I did. Reading my old entries with that level of detail is so fun.) This continued on for seven years until LiveJournal ‘died.’ Then I stopped long-form journalling altogether.
It was around this period when I tried blogging (the same blog you’re reading now). I’ve always struggled with it. I was never comfortable with writing so publicly about personal things. At least with LiveJournal, it wasn’t completely public — I had complete control over who could see my posts. I limited my journal entries to my mutual friends there who shared their personal posts with me, too. I have no such control with a public blog. So my posts were mostly about ideas and my interests instead of my personal life and my day-to-day. My posts were sporadic, and many times I started over and over again.
Then two years ago, I decided to go back to online journalling. Since I really missed my LiveJournal days, I decided to reignite the spark by moving to Dreamwidth. This time, my journal is only for me. And I’m keeping it this way forever. Of course, I don’t post there as frequently as I used to in my teenage years, but I do write when I feel like saying something (to myself).
Earlier this year, I started a bullet journal. I have been writing every single day and have yet to miss a day since I began. I’m pretty proud of it. It’s very therapeutic for me. I write my to-do lists, status updates for each day, and random thoughts on it. I use cute stickers and highlighters to keep the pages colorful and fresh to the eyes. It hasn’t been a year yet, but I already I used up two notebooks. The only problem I have is how I should get rid of the journals when I’m done with them (burn them?) — or if I should get rid of them at all. But based on how much I enjoy rereading my old journal entries from my old LiveJournal, I’ll probably decide to keep them in the end. Because I can’t remember everything.
Journalling has always been a friend of mine. Looking back, no matter where I was in life or how I was doing, I always looked for it, always wanted to write. And I imagine I will always be writing on a journal until I’m old.