The Dark Underbelly of Journaling

I have had a lot of inquiries as to whether my sudden new need to return to journaling means that I will cease to blog-- it may appear as though I have already ceased to blog, given the infrequency of my postings and their sudden white hot lameness-- but fear not, as this is not the case. The lack of postings is simply because not much of note has occurred to me lately, and I am in a period of oscillating between Totally Unoriginal Thought ("I think Dame Edna just might be a man!") and Entirely Too Original Thought ("Have you ever noticed that when some fireworks go off, they look like big round balls that are racing right at your head?"), neither one of which really lend themselves to blogging.

And as for the journaling, I'm still debating whether I should even go back to it. Because as Cue pointed out, there is now an actual person in my house who could read it, whereas before I was perfectly comfortable just leaving my journal out in plain view (except when I lived with Dan, and practically buried it in a pile of my own feces to keep him from getting near it). Not that I think Ben would read my journal, and not that I would write anything bad about him in it. But the fact that he could read it if he wanted to...

Also, it turns out that not all of my journals were as genius as the Letter of Feelings journal. The journal that immediately follows it, the I Wish I Were Way More Important Journal, is rather annoying. Apparently, I felt that my life had no impact on anyone else's life whatsoever, by which I mean that they did not weep and tear out their hair every time I exited a room. It does contain this eerily prescient paragraph, however, written directly before a non-fiction workshop that I feared was going to go poorly (eerily prescient, is that a Wendy-ism?):

"I'm getting really antsy and upset all the sudden. Like I know everyone will be disappointed. Oh, brilliant. Why don't I just go get a job in insurance?"

So, the point is: I am still blogging, and I may begin journaling, as soon as I can scrape together enough stuff to modge-podge onto the cover of a composition notebook, which is really the only good journal (mainly because of its ability to hold modge-podge). Also, I am glad that I am past both the Letter of Feelings portion of my life (in which I was a hilarious psycho) and the Why Aren't There More Lifesized Posters of Me Everywhere phase of my life (when I was a pathetic crybaby psycho). Now, I am just a normal person, although still hilarious, and now much better looking. And obviously, still quite modest.

Also, as an unrelated update, Ben and I are about to start our sixth week of non-smoking! Go go gadget cleanlungs!

The Journal Journal

I don't know about the rest of you bloggers, but I've been having some nostalgia for my journal lately. My plain old, pen and paper journal, which I relied so heavily on in college and, to a much greater extent, grad school, where I apparently journalled obsessively about everything from the bed side at hotels ("The bed in this Sleep Inn is freakishly large. Like, uncomfortably so. I don't know why you would need a bed this large, except for having an orgy") to my thoughts on Australia ("I fucking hate Australia").

This nostalgia mainly stems from one journal in particular, which I wrote in the period from March 2003 to August 2003 (when I abruptly stopped and began writing in a different journal; according to the last entry, I stopped because I was drunk and pissed off about something, but I can't figure out what, although there is a semi-legible rant about why it's so awesome to be single, which ends with the phrase "I FUCKING HATE BEING SINGLE"). Mainly, this journal was about the following things:

1. My undying love for a guy (not the guy most of you are thinking of), and the ill-fated Letter With My Feelings that was given to him and received with no response whatsoever.

2. Hundreds of pages analyzing why there was no response to the Letter of Feelings.

3. Further analysis of how one particular incident, in which he caught me talking out loud to myself, probably put the death knell to the whole thing.

4. How my boss was absolutely sure that I had single-handedly robbed the company of our entire stock of Lip Ink. (This came up surprisingly often, and was usually intermingled with the Letter of Feelings, for reasons I can't really understand)

All I know is, this journal was intensely awesome, and while I was apparently depressed and nearly insane the entire time, I was also really, really funny.

So it makes me wonder-- should I really be blogging? Or is journaling where it's at? Don't get me wrong, I love blogging, but it has its drawbacks (mainly, that I can't discuss my actual feelings about certain issues for fear of reprisal, as in Pen's PAM entry). While the journal really would afford me more freedom, it, too, has its drawbacks:

• No one else can read it, lest I die of embarrassment (seriously, if any of you ever find this journal that I'm talking about here-- it has a picture of Richard Nixon decoupaged onto the cover-- after my death, you need to destroy it immediately, lest my ghost come to you and eat your children), and blogging allows me the chance to bask in my need to be paid attention to
• Other than the decoupage cover, it's a little aesthetically hideous, and causes hand cramps
• Most importantly, thanks to Ben, I don't really need to write tortured, long entries about how no one will ever love me. Mostly, the new entries would be "July 2: Ben is sexy. All systems are go." And without No One Will Ever Love Me entries, my journal would be pretty skimpy indeed

But I still miss it. I may go back to it, although it would seem odd to do both a journal and a blog, and I fear that I would find myself scavenging my journal for blog material. So for now, I think I will dedicate myself to Journal Interpretation and Self Reflection. So far, I have learned that I really believed that secretly, all my male friends were in love with me, but too shy and tortured to show it. Which they probably were. Who wouldn't be?