Ironically enough, having an online journal has really fragmented my personal journaling in general.
I have diaries and journals dating back to when I was… let’s see… seven years old. For posterity’s sake, my first-ever diary entry went a little something like this:
6|28|’83
Today I had My Blood Test. I was a little Nervice. Tomorrow I Have My Tonsils out. I’m a bit Nervice about It. Bye-Bye!
(Thank goodness my entries got a little more engaging over the years. At least, I hope they did…)
I didn’t really get into regular journaling until middle school, though. From 7th grade through high school and early college, I can string together a set of nine volumes (plus a sheaf of notebook paper and a spiral-bound notebook) that chronicle the happenings of my life, with only a few months-long breaks in the action.
In my later college years, the journaling started to fragment, moving to random notebooks and text files and whatnot. Once I started blogging — officially, late 2002 — most of my thoughts were finally consolidated into one place.
However, everything I need to journal is not safe for public consumption. I suppose I could write unpublished entries in my blog, but that always leaves the possibility of an accidental publishing to the world. I’d rather keep a private text file on my computer for rants about individuals, or weird dreams I’ve had, or talking about life events that the world really doesn’t need to know about. Plus, I’ve been known to write longhand in a journal I keep in my purse. (I haven’t done that for a few years now, but I did that for a good year or two, around 2006.)
So, despite my prolific writings online, my inner musings may be lost to the ages if I don’t end up printing them out and saving them in their own rightful volume, next to the other chronicles of my life.
Granted, these precious chronicles of my life are stowed in a box in the extra bedroom, but still…