My Name is Ocean and I Am a Journaler (Heartsong Essay Contest)

 

Couldn't do it, could you?  Couldn't take a real sabbatical from journaling?  You SO need a 12-step program!  

Okay, no, I couldn't.  I spent more time not-journaling than I do journaling.  I have gotten so used to looking at my world with an eye toward writing about it that I couldn't just grind to a halt.  I did find several new journals to read, though, in my frenzied effort not to write anything of my own for all of five days.  

Let's talk about this -- this problem. I can't believe it!  You've been keeping an online journal for more than a year and you haven't told anyone in your daily life?  How wierd is that?  

Pretty wierd, I guess.  At first I didn't tell anyone because I figured it would be a short-lived enterprise.  I don't know how many paper journals I have lying around in which I've written a page or two, or maybe a week's worth of pages, and then given up.  But this one took on a life of its own.  And then. . . I don't know why I didn't tell anyone.  I don't think I've said anything terrible about anyone I know.  I tend to think that the people I know are extraordinary -- loving and giving and talented and smart.  And I love where I live, and how and why people choose to live here.  And I steer pretty far from my work life. And my husband and children do know, so they could read it if they were so inclined, which apparently they aren't.   So there's really no reason not to say anything, except that now it's been going on so long that it would seem even wierder to suddenly disclose the existence of this journal to people who haven't stumbled across it..  

Yeah, what about that?  You've been saying for two two years that you have ADD.  How have you kept this up?  

It's true that I have the attention span of. . . well, of whatever has no attention span at all.  But journaling is different every day.  New ideas, new photos, new crises, new news.  And it's close to effortless.  I'm on the computer anyway, so I don't have to find a notebook and a pen that actually works.  And I can play around with my pictures, and with stuff I find online.  I don't have to locate, you know, concrete things in the house -- all those things that I didn't put where they are supposed to go.  It's bad enough that I have to keep looking for my keys and the checkbook.  I can't really spend a lot of time searching for notebooks, too.  

You are funnier in real life than you are in your journal.  

That might be true.  There is a lot of sadness in my life.  Some staggering losses.  Some things that, if I peered at them with a magnifying glass, would prevent me from getting out of bed in the morning.  Humor is the only antidote available on a daily basis.  And really: you can't limp around in a state of woe-is-me all the time.  You only get this one life so you need to do whatever it takes to live it.  Journaling helps to make that possible.  

How is that?  

It's a reflective activity.  It doesn't mirror my life, but it enables me to pull out selected facets and polish them up.  I don't know whether they look better or worse by the time I get done, but they do look like something of me.  And even if no one else would recognize what's behind some of what I say, I do. I'm living a more conscious interior life, because I'm thinking, either before or after the fact, or sometimes both, about what I'm doing in terms of what I might write about it.   I think that another journaler has already written about this more effectively than I can, which has something to do with another question further down the page.

What about these other people?  What does that mean, to keep a journal for other people to read? People whom you don't know?  

That's a tough one for me. I get a little obsessed by it.  And I am completely bummed when I write about something of huge significance to me and very few people comment  on what I've said -- which happens to me all the time.  That's one of the reasons I tried to go on hiatus.  I needed to straighten that aspect of journaling out in my head.  Notice: I took away the counter.    And as far as people I don't know -- I've always read stuff written by people I don't know, so why shouldn't I send out my own little missives as well?   

You seem to have adapted quickly to an online existence.  Good or bad?  

I first got online years ago when a medical crisis in my family forced me into an unknown world.  That was my first taste of internet-as-community.  I was dealing with an unusual situation for which there wasn't much help in my real life community -- or in anyone else's, for that matter. It wasn't something I wanted to whine about all the time to my friends.  The internet was a powerful tool for ending that excruciating sense of isolation and bringing people together to share information, painful experiences, and solutions.  Then I met a group of mothers online  -- I think we all know how isolating motherhood can be -- and that was just fun. I have a wonderful group of women friends here where I live, but I also have this absorbing need to extend my reach.  (I attrribute that to those six years in boarding school -- I just got used to being surrounded by women of every possible temperament and I feel adrift without that aspect of my life fully functional.)  It doesn't bother me that I can't see the people I'm becoming friends with.  I'm not sure that people choose to reveal or hide any more or less of themselves online than  they do in real life.  

What does all that have to do with journaling?  

I like to TALK.  I like to listen, too -- or, in this case, read.  I like to know what people are passionate about -- and that's what people tend to write about.  I like  to bounce my ideas and experiences off other people; I like to share my perspectives and see them funneled back to me through someone else's words.  I love it when someone else makes a statement and others pick up and build upon it.  And I love the variety of journals out there.  At my age and stage and locale in life, I don't encounter many at-home moms, or fundamentalist Christians, or people who fly-fish or have swimming pools or live in Paris.  But I can read what they all have to say.  

And the photos?  

I've always loved photography.  I wish I were better at it, but I learn something new almost every day from other photographers online.  Since I like to get out and walk and hike and canoe, photography gives me another way of recording the world as I see it.  Now that I journal online, I am looking around all the time and wondering how something might appear in Midlife Matters. Yesterday I walked past a nearby construction site and thought: Look at that.  I would have been interested whether I had been journaling or not -- for months an architectural firm has been transforming a landmark Christian Science Church into its new headquarters and today work was being done on the tower -- but I wouldn't have gone back home for my camera  in nearly 100-degree humidity if I didn't have a place to record what I saw.  Now I'm always asking myself: Is there a way to convey what I see, or to offer someone else a chance to view something differently?  

Your sabbatical is over, isn't it?  

Looks that way.  

 

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The above is my submission for this month's Artsy Essay Contest.  Go to the link for more terrific essays.