why we write
April 9, 2006 at 7:33 pm (meta)
This weekend, landisdad and I finally finished painting one of the rooms of the basement, which meant that we could start moving boxes back downstairs. (Can I get an 'amen!') In the moving process, I stumbled upon a box of my old journals from high school and college. Painful re-reading, yes, but it also got me thinking about my own history as a diarist, and how it's different, now that I blog.
Then I read these two posts from two of my favorite bloggers, and it made me think about it some more.
As a teenager and a young woman, I wrote in my journal at least weekly. When I was having a sturm-und-drang-filled life, I wrote about everything–boyfriends, drugs, girlfriends, my parents, money troubles, sex, teachers I hated or loved, alcohol, you name it, it's in there. I've kept a journal more-or-less continuously since I was 13 or 14 years old.
But as I got older, there were more and more years where I might have 50 journal entries for the whole year. And since I've become a parent, it's probably half that. There's still plenty of sturm-und-drang, but now it's of the 'this is your brain on two-year-old' type, rather than the 'this is your brain on drugs' type. Blogging has given me the discipline to keep writing almost every day, and I'm thankful for that.
I've always thought that I kept a diary not just for myself, but for my descendents. Who knows whether my kids (or grandkids?) will want to read it or not–that'll be up to them. But especially since I've become a parent, I've got all kinds of questions for my grandmother, and I've wished I could go back in time and ask. I wish I could have a journal or some other private writings of hers, and I hope that someone in the future will be interested in what I have to say.
I've often thought that the point of blogging is to have an online community, and I'm grateful for the community that I've found through this blog, and through other online venues. But what I think I'm most grateful for is the fact that I've found a reason to write again, on a regular basis.
