The Words That Make Me

My first journal entry was exactly two sentences long .

...And they were short sentences on top of that; just long enough to state my name and that I had a journal. Now, to be fair, I was 8 years old and I had been given the "task" of writing in my brand new journal as part of a weekend activity designed to get me to do something other than watch cartoons all day, so I still had a lot to learn .

Since then I've kept journals off and on most my life . They range from the old binder and loose leaf journal with plenty of space for clumsy grade school fingers to scrawl entries, to small leather-bound books to make the owner feel like this journal is important and noteworthy, to digital blog spaces that can accommodate uploaded pictures and videos .

But each journal I've kept offers its own unique snapshot of my life, even if what I was writing about wasn't particularly insightful . Each journal paints a different picture of what it was like to be me .

My earliest journals, filled with short entries that rather than describing events, merely list things I liked and hated . For a ten-year old me, it was the little things I wanted to write about like tuna fish sandwiches, Happy Meal toys, and my apparent unending hatred of the grade school math .

I particularly enjoy thumbing through journals I wrote from some time I spent abroad . Those journals record exact events from my daily life, living in a country not my own . Since I wasn't there on vacation, some entries get too involved in monotony of my day-to-day life, but far more contain memories of people I loved, food I was introduced to, including my first time eating cow tongue! Everything was new and exciting to me in those days!

Not all entries fill me with joy . Some make me roll my eyes at things that I thought were important at the time but years down the road seem beyond trivial . I could get so mad at a particularly bad bit of traffic that I would write it down but now I can only shake my head . But I would never get rid of these entries . They remind me to focus on what's important and not get caught up the nitty-gritty . Plus sometimes they're just good for a laugh .

And of course my digital journals are another thing altogether . I've been able to save my memories, and keep photos of these times with them . My digital journals, be they blogs, or stored emails become more than just journals, they become scrapbooks too! One in particular, where I kept pictures of a fantastic vacation, has the power to absolutely transport me back to that wonderful trip!

Because of these memories, I've always kept my journals with me, in an honored space on a bookshelf or on a well clicked bookmark on my web browser . By preserving anything from my thoughts on a given day, to just listing my activities, they travel with me as a reminder of what made me, me .