Empty journals.
How they terrorise me.
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In 2022, I started writing a personal journal. It was the year after I graduated from university. I had no plans, no job, some idea of what I’d like to do with my life, but very few opportunities. Quite quickly, I realised that the year would be unpredictable, a big departure from my three structured years of study. Somewhere between my graduation and the beginning of my new adventure, I read Atomic Habits, and I began using many of the recommendations in the book to give my days some rhythm. It worked well; within a month, I had figured out a routine I was satisfied with. Every morning I would read for half an hour and fill one page of my journal. My life, at first, was not very adventurous. As a result, my journal became a record of vague thoughts and fears about the year that lay before me. As the months ticked by, I would occasionally have exciting news to plaster on that day’s page. I got some freelance work, I met up with friends, I celebrated my granny’s birthday. My habit was consistent, but the journal served more as a device to structure my days than it did as a device to capture the highlights of my life. I became overwhelmingly grateful for my habit when I met my girlfriend in the second half of the year. Before we were dating, while we were getting to know each other, I would steal half an hour every day to fill a page (often more) with a concoction of hormones, thrills, worries, and questions that spilled out of me. My habitual writing paid off and I have a beautiful account of our love story, far more detailed than my memory could ever hope to be. That journal is invaluable to me. I continued filling it until I ran out of pages, and then I began filling the next one. My habit, though not always daily, stretched to the end of 2022. I journaled intermittently in the beginning of 2023, but the habit turned into a rarity.
I so enjoy reading the pages detailing the days in which my girlfriend and I fell in love. I also read those early entries describing the doubts I had for 2022 and reflect on how many of the fears I conquered. At least half of them were never realised. Reading my wildest worries and recalling how I dealt with the more realistic discomfort I faced encourages me that I might be able to face this year, too, and whatever challenges it may bring. I also get excited, imagining all of the unexpected experiences that are coming my way. After I graduated, I never could have predicted what the following two years would bring. I have been lucky enough, somehow, to travel to fifteen major cities in seven countries across three continents in the time since my graduation. I speak a new language now. I live in a new country. I’ve since thrown myself into writing. Before taking up the habit of writing in my journal, I didn’t write much at all. Apart from a few articles in my high school newspaper that my English teacher practically forced me to write (she saw then what took me another six years to see) and a couple short screenplays that I wrote in my last year of university, I only ever wrote for assignments. Without that journal in 2022, this one wouldn’t exist. I don’t write in my personal journal anymore. It isn’t a decision I made, it’s a result of my busy schedule and limited energy. I certainly have experiences, reflections, or events worth documenting. I often wish that I would have journaled something I didn’t, like my New Year’s holiday in London or the first two weeks of work in Germany. I wonder which details of my experiences are lost because I didn’t capture them. I wonder, too, if there are lessons I will have to learn again because I did not document them well enough the first time around.
There is a half-empty journal sitting on the bookshelf to my right as I write this. The blank pages call to me as much as they scare me. I dream of filling each page with the details of my life so that I can, one day, look back and smile—like I do when I read about the first impressions I had of the woman I now know so well. I want desperately to preserve a fraction of my twenty-fourth year. I am convinced that I can and should put some sliver of my heart on the page and save it for later. I am convinced, too, that I will need all of the parts of myself one day. I feel like I have to collect my memories in preparation for the day that I need to refer back to my own life as though it were a thick and thoroughly confusing academic text. I’m scared that without rigorous and well kept notes, my life will sneak by me.
I had guitar lessons when I was eight or nine, but I never practiced much. After two years, I put the guitar down. I picked it up again in high school. I played a little here and there. I wrote quite a few songs while I attended university, many of which I’m still proud of. My skills were still rudimentary, but I played almost every day. My guitar was where I turned to, to vent my feelings. It felt like home when I moved out. My songs often helped me work through my feelings. Though I quit as a boy, as a man, I loved playing guitar. I haven’t touched a guitar in about a year, maybe longer. I will certainly play again, though I don’t know when. I hope that my journalling will be similar. I think I can part with the details of my life when it comes to work and holidays, fears and dreams. Many of my fears and dreams are so intangible and ever changing that they tend to overcrowd my thoughts in any case. I think that the idea of never journaling again breaks my heart, though. There are some experiences I want on paper. I am greedy for the important memories I am yet to encounter. Fatherhood comes to mind. How will I ever be able to write enough about the face of my son, growing from boy to man far too quickly for me. I hope to come back to my habitual note taking, then. I hope that I can give myself the gift of careful and attentive writing. Insurance against a foggy mind. I think I might be able to allow my journalling habit to die for now. I look forward to its revival.
Fear is the wrong motivator, anyway. If there is anything I want to drive my writing, it’s love, not fear. If you enjoyed this journal, please send it to someone you love.