I began identifying as a “journalist” as early as age 17, long before I actually started keeping a journal.
As the high school columnist and summer intern for that bastion of Central Florida journalism, the now defunct Lake Wales Daily Highlander, I was the cubbiest of cub reporters, filling notepads with scribbled quotes from interviews, filling baseball scorebooks with baffling plays from 11-year-old Little Leaguers and filling black CRT screens with glowing green type that prompted sports editor (and later “bestie”) Bob Perkins to once disdainfully proclaim, “This isn’t writing, this is typing! Go back and try again.”
If my journalistic career turned toward factual reporting (on my best days), then by the time I picked up the daily habit of keeping a journal, I found the practice to be more about processing my journey of faith and my feelings. Regular readers of New South Essays are subjected to my sentimentality, which disguises my usual practice of avoiding overt displays of emotion. I reserve the revealing of my true feelings for the pages of my journal.
Keeping a journal (which sounds way more manly than “writing a diary” but not as manly as “captain’s log”) has become for me a daily discipline that grounds me. Without it, I would be tempted to ignore any warning signs that I have misplaced priorities or I am ignoring loved ones. My default response to emotional triggers is to keep calm and carry on, plowing into projects and tasks rather than face uncomfortable thoughts and feelings.
Writing to an audience of no one allows me the freedom to put into words what’s truly on my mind, what’s bothering me or what’s giving me joy. I try not to make it just a never-ending series of complaints. I make space for gratitude for victories, small and large. The scratching of an ink pen on paper provides much-needed perspective.
Sometimes I think about my penmanship. My handwriting deteriorated mightily during my years of scribbling quotes in reporter’s notepads. Sometimes I think about family, what they are going through and what they may be needing from me that day. Sometimes I pull back and try to make sense of what’s going on in the world and how it impacts my life and vice versa. Sometimes it’s painfully vulnerable. Sometimes it’s playfully humorous. At no times are my journals revisited.
I don’t keep a journal to go back and review. Maybe I will one day, but I just can’t handle reading my thoughts from days gone by. I’m afraid of what I will find there: immaturity, inaccuracy, imitation, ignorance. Yes, there could be profundity and some very nice handwriting, but it’s too risky for me to re-read. If someone should stumble upon the collection after I’m gone, I urge them to resist spending any time with them. If I am of sound mind, I’ll likely destroy them before the end, but we don’t always get enough time to take care of such details.
For me, the journal is an outlet for that moment, for that day. There’s no point in looking more deeply than that. When I finish my morning quiet time and reflection, I am refreshed. That’s all I need from it.
For at least the last 10 years, it seems the solution to every stressful situation recounted in self-help and spiritual practice books has been to journal. So maybe I’m accidentally doing something right.
I will go on identifying as a “journalist” even if I have a different meaning in mind than the rest of the world. “Words mean things,” as my former boss and mentor Ben McDade likes to say. The words in my journal mean I’m trying to resolve my issues and understand the world around me.
I don’t know if it’s helping, but my cursive is improving.
New South Essays 