Dear diary – Hive and Nest

A lot of people say that blogging is their new journal. I don’t buy that for one second. Who writes their innermost thoughts and then posts them for the entire world to see? Nobody, that’s who. Bloggers universally give a sanitized, edited version of their lives. Some are way more edited than others, but we all show more of the good side of our lives than the bad.

I used to be very good about keeping a journal until a few months after I got married. My first year of marriage was a tumultuous one and I aired all my concerns and grievances in my journal. I needed a safe place to sort through my feelings and emotions and decide what needed to be discussed with my husband and what was just hormones and me freaking out about nothing. One day when I was out of town visiting my sister, my husband stumbled across my journal. To this day he swears he didn’t know what it was. Naturally, once he started reading he didn’t stop.

Let’s just say the situation got very ugly and there were a lot of tears and drama.

And that was the end of me keeping a journal. What’s the point if you can’t write what you really, really think? If somebody might come across all those messy, menacing thoughts? It might as well be a blog.

I’ve tried to start a journal several times, but I always start with “The History of Jennie”. After three pages I’m fed up and I don’t write again. But I feel guilty. And I seriously need to vent. So last week I broke out yet another sparkling clean journal and started once more. This time there is no back history. No “this is what I’ve been doing since I wrote six years ago.”

It felt great.

I’d forgotten how wonderful, how freeing, it is to write whatever comes into my head. No worries about punctuation or uploading photos. Just me and a pen. I haven’t written so much by hand since I addressed Christmas cards (if that even counts).

If you’ve been meaning to start a journal, don’t put it off another day. Just jump in where you are. Oh, and find a really good hiding place.