The Beginning

The first hardbound journal I ever owned was a birthday gift. I had just turned 19 years old. It was a pivotal time in my life. I’d kept a journal before that, but on college-ruled paper in a binder left over from school. Nothing official. Nothing fancy.

That first clothbound hardback had a blue spine and maroon covers. Not the most attractive thing, I’ll grant you.

But it did the trick. It got me to step back into a pastime I’d left behind the year before.

I’ll talk about my first ever junk journal sometime later. I have lots of journaling anecdotes. Some too precious to share. But for today, I just want to reminisce about that first official hardback.

Journaling ain’t what it used to be.

If we dug it out and read it today I’d be embarrassed. Embarrassed because so many ideas were stated as matters-of-fact. Like I had any clue.

I wrote about church services I hoped would turn into full-fledged revivals, and personal prayers over calling and purpose and potential relationships.

I wrote about the flutist who caught my eye while I was committed to the church’s nine month long school of discipleship. Which meant the girl was off limits.

In fact, journaling my thoughts about her led to the most memorable mentor failure I experienced as a new believer.

We were on an airplane heading out of country. I was so attracted to this girl, but I was required to abstain from dating until the school year ended. We were only a month away at this point. Soon I’d have to make a move.

Out of beautiful naïveté, I offered four pages of that first journal to my mentor. I was hoping for useful feedback. I was desperate.

After what felt like an eternity, he handed back the book to me and stated calmly, “Daniel, you think too much.”

I’m sorry, what? I have a REAL problem. How does that help?

Journaling in shame.

The tone he used when he spoke to me was stern and sober. He really meant it. He believed that my big problem at the time was thinking too much.

And what, I wonder, was I supposed to do with my brain? Shut it off?

I was humiliated. I’d looked up to this man as a father-figure. He was confident and calm and people listened to him. I admired him greatly. And I took his critique to heart. I allowed an ignorant and uneducated opinion to strike a wound.

There’s something wrong with me. I should have to think all the time. There’s apparently something els people can do with their time other than think.

That experience created a splitting of lives. There became the life I lived publicly, and the life I lived in my writing. I learned people weren’t to be trusted, and mentors can be even more clueless than the young ones they’re leading.

What also became clear was that we can obviously misdiagnose the problem in others due to a difference in personality. A lesson I took with me and applied with every one I’ve met.

Journaling as escape.

For me, journaling became an escape. A place to process thoughts and feelings safely. Without criticism or interruption. Without someone yawning or treating the sacred in me like something common and uninteresting.

What is your reason for journaling?

If you’re here and you’re reading this, I know a few things about you:

This isn’t the first page you landed on here. You probably came looking to read more about bullet journals or spiritual journaling or preserving journals for generations.

After that, you felt a little curious and you poked around, looking for the WHY or the WHO behind these words.

You clearly have an interest in journaling, so my question to you is: what is YOUR reason for journaling?

• To process emotions
• To clear your mind
• To organize ideas
• To record memories
• To monitor symptoms
• To track progress
• To express your creativity

If even one of those resonates, drop an email address and become a weekly newsletter subscriber.

“A Self Observed” is a play on the deeply personal reflections of C. S. Lewis. After his wife passed, he wrote A Grief Observed. He’s one of many who inspired this journaling journey I’m on.

Do you really know yourself? Like, really? A hand given permission to act of its own accord might teach you a thing or two about yourself.

Maybe you’re not there yet. But you’d like to be. Good enough.

These aren’t posts about journaling. They’re posts about not disappearing.

Don’t let yourself disappear.

Join me in cherishing the polaroids that journaling makes of our lives.

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