I found it so difficult to think anything beginning with the letter J to write. No idea why.
I asked on Twitter for ideas, and people suggested lots of topics: joke books (I have none), library jokes (I never remember punchlines), Jung (I’d need to learn more about him first), my sister Juji (wouldn’t it be weird?), just in time as opposed to just in case acquisitions (work work, and besides, this shouldn’t be new any more), joy, journey, jelly beans, juxtaposition, join, jam, jump the shark (didn’t know this phrase)…
Anyway, while talking with Tui, who suggested Jung, I starting thinking about what I do know about his work. The short answer: almost nothing. I won’t go into the convolutions of my thought process, but to summarise, thinking about Jung, then psychoanalysis, then the unconscious, which finally lead me on my journals… et voilà! Journalling! Of course!
Look at this stack of Moleskines.
These are only some of them, I think I have a few more packed away in a box in the attic. Every year I maintain a diary in a soft cover (it must be soft, I got a hard cover book one year and it was just.. meh) Moleskine day-to-a-page large planner. The diary contains a very mundane record. Amounts spent on bills, books read, the weather, movies watched, walks, events. Sometimes, feelings and thoughts about events. But usually descriptions. I don’t know how many of these diaries I have written.
Besides the diary, I also fill one, or two, or three pocket notebooks each year. They have to have either plain or squared pages – not ruled. While my diary tends to have short notes and dot points, the notebooks can be filled with rambly stuff. Observations, feelings (omigoodness the feelings. Better out than in, I say). Also my pocket notebook is a commonplace book, I jot quotes down, lists, poems, bits from books I’m reading. No idea how many notebooks I have filled, either.
I seem to have this compulsion to write it all down, record it. I think this blog is the online manifestation of that compulsion.
And yet, and yet, I have this THING about the ineptitude of my journalling. Like I should be doing the journal thing better somehow. That my writing is somehow bad and should be better. Even though no one reads the diaries or the notebooks except me.
Who says it all has to make sense, anyway?!