My Own Story

It looks like it's time for another blog post! Despite my desires to post more frequently, I've only been able to get about one post up per month. Perhaps in the future, I'll be able to post more frequently.

I'm currently writing a short story about a group of young adults who have fallen into monster hunting. The story was inspired by the role-playing game and novels of #iHunt, which are fantastic by the way, but I wanted to approach that subject matter my own way. It's been a fun ride, so far, and I'm really enjoying the characters I've created and the story that's unfolding. I started writing it with only the vaguest of plans, so the events that I end up adding to the story surprise me, more often than not.

The act of writing this story, of sitting in front of my laptop and typing out words, is extremely enjoyable. While I've known for quite awhile that I like to write, this project has brought that home. And, it helped me realize another thing: I love to journal.

I've kept a journal off and on ever since I was a child. It's something that my mother made me do on Sundays and it's something I've done on my own as an adult. When I was young, it was torture. What do I write? Most often, I wrote about how angry I was with Mom that she made me journal. Or how I was hungry. Or how much I didn't want to go to school anymore. You know, quality stuff.

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I just went to the garage to hunt down my childhood journal. I flipped through the entries and, surprisingly, they are more descriptive than I remember. Though, here's a gem that fits the previous description:

July 9, 1995

Today is Sunday. I hate Sundays. We half to write a whole page in our journal. I half to work on Citezenship in the Nation. I hate scouts. They're boring. [Name Excluded] is merit badge counsolor for Citezenship in the Nation. I'm friends with [Name Excluded] & [Name Excluded] now. They like me. I think we will turn out to be good friends. I hate dad. He yells at us all the time. I wish he wouldn't yell at us all the time. 😄

Yeah, lots of spelling errors and teen angst.

That brings me to the point of this post: telling my own story. Perhaps it's because of how much my mother emphasized journaling, but for a long time I've felt compelled to journal. Journaling is documenting my life, telling my own story. At times, though, this all feels pointless. I don't share my journal with anyone else and I don't go back and read my journals. I'm too busy living my life; I don't have time.

So, I ask the question: What is the point?

I can't tell you the point, other than to say I feel compelled to do it. I like to write these things down. I like to keep a record of the events I live through and the things that happen to me as I go through my life. I think that the act of writing these things down helps me to remember them, but I can't say for sure. Since I have never really sat down to re-read my journals, I can't tell you if I've forgotten anything that I thought would be solidified in my memory upon writing it down. I can't tell you if I experienced epiphanies that I thought would change the way I viewed life to later either realize I was wrong or forget the lesson learned.

What is the point of journaling? Perhaps I am doing it wrong by not reviewing them. Perhaps I would be leading a more successful life if I had only clung to some nugget of wisdom I discovered and wrote down.

Or, maybe, these journals are not for me at all. Maybe they're for my family after I'm gone. I have struggled with my mortality quite a bit, over the years. I grew up in a religious environment where the focus was on just making it through life. "This is all temporary and doesn't really matter. Just make it through, to the end, doing the right things, and you'll have everything you ever wanted!"

I ceased believing in that, and shifting my paradigm took several years. My thoughts and feelings got written down occasionally as I fought through the depression and confusion that brought with it. Maybe those thoughts and feelings will help someone else down the line, as they struggle to find their place in the world, too.

Whatever the reason, journaling is a form of writing, a form that I enjoy. And, those documents tell my story, right from the horse's mouth.

My story is the most important one, to me. It's the one I'm living. It's the one that affects me, every day, at the beginning and at the end. It's a story that only I know inside and out.

To be honest, that's a little scary. Do I want to be the only one that knows the ins and outs of my story? I can answer that one right now:

No!

I don't want to be the only one. I know that one day, I won't grace this world with my illuminating presence. 😏 I don't want to be forgotten. I realize that my name is not going to go into the history books. The world at large will not know me; I am insignificant. But, someone who reads my journals will know me. They will read my story. And, I think, that's enough.