i may call myself a "writer" but i use that term very loosely. i LOVE to write..i write every single day in my journal,in my blog on Myspace, on Livejournal. & i have lost count of how many other blogs i have online & do not update.i have kept journals since i was 10 years old. i threw some of them away when i was younger & i wish that i hadn't. i threw them out after i had broken up with a boyfriend that i wanted to forget about..other journals just disappeared. i threw away 2 of my journals after i found them in my younger brother's bedroom. he took them thinking i wouldn't notice. but of course i did cos those words in those purple notebooks were my whole life.but i couldn't read them ever again once i knew that my brother had read them. i was too embarrassed.
So here i am nearly 30 years old with a HUGE box filled with over 10 years worth of journals.it's one of those big plastic totes.... when my husband & i moved we had this box in the trunk of our car for weeks, too lazy to lift the heavy box & put it away in our new apartment! My mom called us one day becos she had a flat tire & needed us to come & get her so she could buy a new tire. we bought the tire & then my husband jamie had to change the tire.of course the car jack was undernearth this massive journal-filled blue tote! so he took it outta the trunk & set it down in the parking lot. & it occured to me that my whole life was in that box. that was MY LIFE in there. the only proof that i ever existed....what if we just drove away & left my whole life in that box in an empty parking lot?! when i die no one would ever know that i was alive! (which isn't totally true cos my many,many photo albums & scrapbooks were still at home!) but that's all i could think about...all i could do was stare at that box containing my whole life story.
Thru the years my journal was my psychiatrist & my best friend.writing is what got me thru hard times. all of my break ups & break downs. my journal was there to comfort me. so what do i do now with these notebooks filled with crazy irrational thoughts & fucked up drunken ramblings??? i started writing zines & poerty when i was 16 or 17. then i started doing spoken word. a majority of my writing was derived from my journals. and now my journals serve only one purpose--as reference. while i do have a pretty good memory(all tho admittedlly NOT as good as it used to be!)--i have the advantage of my journals if i can't remember something that happened. i can use them like encyclopedias! if i can't remember WHEN something happened or the details of something i'm trying to remember i can just go back & look it up in my handy dandy journal! so it' like a party favor!!--if one of my friends can't recall something i can just look up the event in question & tell them everything that happened...in detail! people always ask me,"how do you remember all of that?!" i say,"Well i don't. but i went home & wrote about it in my journal that night." then they give me that "yer so weird" look & become freaked out instead of amazed! i don't recall details of conversations unless i(more or less) transcribed the conversation from memory in my journal. so i could study it & pick it apart & dissect it at a later date.which proved to be a problem becos i had an obsession with trying to figure out things that were said to me by boys that i liked...i tried to find a deeper meaning in our conversations & read too much into things.so that kinda got me into trouble sometimes. some may say this is abnormal....it kinda is. or at the very least unhealthy.
But i am really happy that i kept journals all those years.i have been very unstable at times. & i needed that outlet very badly. writing was my therapy. it saved me from losing my mind cos alotta times i felt like i had no one to talk to...i talked to my family & friends but alotta things i didn't share with them. i saved those thoughts & insecurities for my journal.
I only recently started calling myself a WRITER. i'm not an author nor have i written anythng that has been published outside of the zine world. (with the exception of some poetry.) so what should i call myself if i don't use the word "writer"?? i love writing--in fact i am obsessed with it.as a result all i have is a drawer full of zines i've written since the mid 90s & a big box full of journals that are faded & illegible.i have never taken a writing class. so i have never 'honed my craft." so how can i call myself a "writer" when i am so obviously no good at it? i have wanted to write a book for years just to see if i could do it & after 3 or 4 failed attempts--i still haven't done it...so how can i possibly call myself a a "WRITER"?????????
