As of tonight I have written 145 entries in my personal journal that I began this past Christmas. In the past six months I have written more in the journal than I have in 3 years of writing this blog. I like that. While this blog will be here for people to read for years to come, my journal will be mine alone to keep and share as I please for the rest of my life. It is my thoughts and hopes and dreams as I go through (almost) each day. They are my perspective on life at any given time. It is a version of me, a picture of myself, frozen in time.
I love the privacy that my journal holds. I feel no reason to hold myself back in my comments there. The purpose of it is not to inform anyone of anything. It is 1) to let myself express my uncensored thoughts on anything, anytime and 2) to give me something concrete to show how I have changed as time goes by. Just tonight I looked back on a few of the entries I wrote six months ago and I can tell how much I have changed by then. Just think how much that change will be years from now, and I will have a way to measure it. I will be able to look back on my thoughts at a specific moment in time and think 'Wow. I have grown up since then. I am so glad that I am where I am today.' When I have those moments, I will write them down. I will write them down for myself. Uncensored. A method of remembering myself as I once was.
Kara might say that I should try to live more in the present. She says that I spend too much time in my past and my future. I agree. I do spend more time than I should worrying about where I will be years from now or brooding over decisions that I made long ago. Sometimes I need to pull myself out of my thoughts and just live. There are other times, though, when looking back at how I once was helps me to keep moving forward. I look back on things I said or did and I realize then that I can not make the same mistakes again. Or I see that there is a purpose to the path that I am on. These moments help me keep moving forward when other things are telling me to stop. These things tell me that it would be so much easier to remain stagnant in my life. There would be no problem to stay as I am, to stand and watch as others pass me by. See, now? These moments of reflection are my motivation. They are my reason in times of doubt.
That is why I write in my journal every night and why I only write here every so often. I am a naturally born writer. Just ask anyone in my family, it's in my genes. What I have realized though, is that my purpose in writing doesn't always have to be to impress or entertain an audience. My writing has just as much meaning, often more, when I am writing purely for myself. I can be selfish in my writing without hurting those around me. I can transcribe my own thoughts without any intention of sharing them with anyone else and still have them mean something. My words are just as valuable in my journal, read by only me, as they are on this blog where anyone can access them.
