I Finished a Journal

I finished writing a journal yesterday. It is kind of a bittersweet thing.

I bought a Bombay journal from Barnes and Noble in Anchorage back in April of 2019. It is bound in leather, has the leather tassel to keep it closed, slightly yellow pages, and was very nice to write in. 

Regular readers of my blog will know that I will often go though periods of regular blogging, followed by long periods of not blogging. The same is true of keeping a journal. I mentioned in a previous post that I had a journal that I had started in my teen years and finished while on my first deployment - that journal lasted me from around the time I was 14 until I was about 22 or 23. That was roughly about 8 or 9 years, almost a decade. That seems like a very long time to keep the same journal going.

It has been over ten years since I last finished a journal, having started a few that are now lost to time. Some were little more than just notebooks that would catch the occasional thought that would escape my mind. Others were actual journals, but I never really kept up with them - I liked the last journal I had before the Bombay journal, but I stopped using it a lot when I started writing with fountain pens; the pages were not really made for fountain pen ink.

When I bought this last journal it was about a year after my ex-wife announced that she wanted a divorce. I was very devastated. I'm still trying to put my life back together. It is a journey that is chronicled in my journal.

The truth of the matter is that I probably wouldn't be close to finishing the aforementioned, legendary, completed journal if it hadn't been for me filling in Lectio Divina, homilies from my priest, and notes from the weekly Oblate conference calls that I miss more often than attend.

At first, I was hesitant to put my Lectio Divina writings in my journal with my personal thoughts, until I realized that Lectio Divina is made up of my personal thoughts. The notes from homilies and the conference calls likewise themselves became the basis for some personal introspection.

The one thing I like about journaling is that it is quite therapeutic. As someone who suffers from depression and anxiety, being able to get my thoughts out of my mind and onto pages either physical or digital can be exactly the therapy that I need. Now, if only I could keep up with the practice.

Finishing this journal feels like setting aside a companion who was there for a long and arduous journey. But doing so only half-way (or even less) through the journey. The journey is not yet complete, it has just evolved from where it started.

It also seems symbolic. I'm putting away the past, and looking towards the future. But, the past - the journal - will always be there to remind me from whence I came. I can look back and see how my past shaped me, but I can safely leave my past in the drawer my journal now resides in while I am carving the life I have left ahead of me.

This isn't the end of my journaling. Indeed, I have another journal ready to be picked up and have the chronicles of my life stained upon its pages. But it is the end of that part of my story, or at least the end of that chapter.

I wonder what adventures my new journal and I will take as we navigate this life.