Journal Entry

Unknown Date

“Sometimes, I’d like to toss the whole idea (of writing) away but so much has been invested – and yet, not enough.”

Finding written records of your past experiences is like digging up time capsules. You buried these ideas so long before, you seldom recall what you put in them. The important thing is to try to remember the story you were trying to tell.

I’m reminded of this whenever I revisit my old musings.

My journal entries can be classified as two types of narratives: the quest, and the absurd. They are not what I would consider interesting accounts of my life; likely due to the subject matter (me), and the vulnerability of it all. And so I always find myself, like a stranger rereading a favourite book, trying to see past what I’ve chosen to record to find the true intent of the word.

What I found was a nonsensical mix of daily reflections and look-backs. Pages of poetry, pen drawn doodles, to-do lists and budgets. One old journal contained letters from my ninth-grade peers. I thought of some keen future archeologist stumbling on it beneath a pile of literary fiction.

“So, this is what they were all about in the nineties,” they will say.

Do not fret. I won’t have that happen. I tossed it into the tiny trash pail in my office. I considered chucking the writings that followed but as I read through them, a common thread emerged from the everyday chaos; the pursuit of writing. It was a thin wire of suffering tightly wound into each entry. Year over year, there it was. The dream. The desire. The doubt. In that doubt, I saw the story of myself – the writer; who without all else in the life that came to be, or the other lives that could have been lived, would still remain.

Doubt can be a beautiful thing.