I never have been able to successfully keep a journal, even as a young child. If you pick up the Hello Kitty diary I was given when I was seven or eight, you will find a few days’ worth of entries and then … nothing for a year or two, then an entry talking about how I forgot about the diary, then another year long gap, then a poem about pumpkin pie written in the style of Shel Silverstein. Followed by nothing but empty pages. Sans the poem, it’s the same story with the three or four other journals I’ve started at various points in my life. Why? I love the idea of journals, and I’m drawn to them in the store. “Maybe the problem is that I’ve never had the RIGHT journal,” I’ll think. “Maybe this exquisite leather-bound one with the creamy smooth pages is just the thing I need.” It’s a pack of lies, though. The journal does not exist that I will ever be able to maintain, and I’m not sure why I thought a blog would be different. It’s easier, in that it takes far less time to type than write. It’s public, which you would think would encourage me to put stuff out there (“Think of your FANS!”). But ultimately, whatever it is that keeps me from reflecting on things by writing them down in journal format seems to be the same thing that prevents me from regularly updating here. Is it laziness, or stubbornness? Is it a short attention span? Is it an overwhelming feeling of having nothing of particular interest to say? I do believe it’s that last one, or maybe I just prefer that answer to being straight-up lazy. Regular, every-day life does not seem like something worth memorializing, and even as I say that I realize how horrible it sounds. We all fool ourselves into thinking we will remember things forever–this sunset, that summer breeze, those hikes in the woods on a fall day–but I’m really spectacularly good at fooling myself that way, and really, how stupid of me. We live in a culture of overshare but can’t I be bothered to write down some words to just share a little? Can’t I take a moment in this space to mention that I harvested a little crop of red hot cherry peppers and poblanos from my patio garden and it looked like a handful of Christmas? I could make a resolution right here to blog regularly, just as I have many times before, but maybe I’ve been going about it wrong. Maybe I need to resolve instead to forget less, and the only way to do that is to write it down or take a picture.
Yes, that’s the ticket. Remember to forget less. It’s so simple, I can’t believe I never thought of it before. Now if you’ll excuse me, this afternoon nap isn’t going to take itself.
