Old school

Back in November, I participated in my second annual NaBloPoMo, i.e. National Blog Posting Month. I posted every day for 30 days and I vowed I would be a more frequent blogger.

But I haven't been.

Not because I haven't been writing. Instead, over the winter/New Year's break, I re-engaged with my journal. Good old, pen and paper journal. The original life documentation. I've had one since I was 11. Which is ... ack ... 30 years. They exist in spiral notebooks and bound blank books of varying shapes in sizes, tucked away in big plastic storage containers in the jumble of our basement. Every now and then, mostly when trying to find something else, I'll come across one of them and flip it open. It's always entertaining, especially the pre-teen and teen years. (Lots and lots about Duran Duran in there for a while. Some day Julia is going to be mortified and/or entertained.)

As I got older, the journal became increasingly neglected. I started blogging instead and had a hard enough time keeping up with that. Blogging was (and is) my public journaling; the private one I kept for the things that I'm only telling myself about.

I just completed one bound journal; I wrote so infrequently, it covered nearly 3 years. All of the entries were about the beginning of my infertility journey, before I even knew that's what it was; and then about dad; and then about endometriosis and surgery and treatment. All of the ups, downs, starts and stops. It was a chronicle of the hard. Not exactly the kind of writing you want to do often.

But I've re-embraced journaling, thanks to some inspiration from Karen at Chookooloonks. When you don't think of a journal as only a dutiful recording of events or thoughts, but instead as a free, private, playful place for your mind, it gets a lot more flexible and fun. You can draw pictures, paste things in, just doodle. Write what happens. What you'd like to have happen. Write letters to yourself.

So I'm back to being an occasional blogger, and that's OK. Sometimes I have things I want to say, or silly videos to share, or photos to post and this will always be the place for that.

Meanwhile, I'm logging my life old school.