#2. they haveeee a good time in the end

[istherewifiinhell]

Seeing dumesh abt aut lau and its like guys i dunno i think this dude as a mental fortitude to which most of us only dream of.

[ittakesrain]

I organized some old journals today-- saved some of the good entries and threw out a ton of notebooks.

I hate to throw out notebooks. My former thoughts and internal monologues are all important and valuable. They were particularly valuable at one time (when they were the present, when they were my reality), but they’re still important now in that they MADE me who I am now. Getting through all that stuff in the past made me who I am today. Writing and journaling about it all helped me process what I needed to process to get through it all. So yeah, I hate to throw out what I’ve written. I don’t like the idea of throwing out what was once my current situation. But in itself, getting rid of (at least some of) it is symbolic. It says “I’m growing up, I’m maturing, I am living my life for the present moment, I am looking forward.” But saving what I think are the important entries says “I understand the significance of my past, the significance of where I have been, where I come from, and I’m taking lessons from that past and saving them to use and help me in the future.” Not to mention the memories! Gotta look back on the memories. Bad stuff, yeah. Good stuff, HELL yeah, and more frequently, and through the lens of appreciation, etc. Gotta remember it all, continuously. I dunno about you but I can’t help but smile when I think of where I’ve been vs where I am.

Which brings me to... What did I learn from doing this? That’s why I’m writing this post. Did I gain any knowledge from the activity? Do I seem the same as or different from the person I was as I wrote those old journals? What did I write about in my journals then vs what do I write about now? How was the progression of the whole thing?

Upon my first examination of this subject, it doesn’t seem like I’ve changed that much. I still keep to do lists in my journals, and I still write them both in list form and as stream-of-consciousness (this I don’t necessarily want to change; I simply want to augment it and make it better). I still write about my day, with what is probably too many extraneous details (I kinda like this too; the quote “we write to taste life twice” comes to mind --even if reading it is harder with all the random details, it’s fun to actually write, and sometimes/most times it gives me such a sense of transporting to my past when I reread it, which is usually really cool!). [Side-note, lately I’ve been journaling on my phone more, which means I go back and reread about the good times WAY more frequently, which I love] I still SADLY write about how I don’t feel like I’m living up to my potential...and that’s a big topic to tackle. Sooo let’s tackle it.

Yeah. I still feel like an overall failure who hasn’t accomplished a whole lot since like, high school TEN years ago. But throughout the course of those ten years, throughout those journals, the things I talk about haveeee changed. It was all about my crushes for a long while. Meg, Deb, Lauren...I went through obsessing about all of them. The fact that I acted like a schoolgirl with a crush for so long had a lot to do with the fact that I never really had a crush as a younger kid, so I was catching up (as I had to do with a GREAT MANY things actually, haha). It also had to do with liking girls for the first time, so yeah. But my point is that now, I’m in a healthy relationship and write about my boyfriend a lot (turns out I’m bi) but not obsessively...and my journaling has kind of tracked our relationship for years but now that we’re dating, it shows that my mindset is NOT that of a girl with a crush. What I’m trying to say is, I’ve changed and that itself is an accomplishment.

I mean I still feel like a “failure” in the job department, but I’ve grown and matured through that too. I’ve learned a bunch of valuable lessons along the way, and even though it isn’t always IN YOUR FACE success, I’ve come to realize that 1. success doesn’t have to be measured in a way society tells us it should, 2. the journey itself is upward which I do regard as success, and 3. my journals document a human being developing into THIS ME, who I am right now, and that’s freakin’ sweet.

In conclusion and to answer my own question, I did gain a great deal from going through my old notebooks, skimming old entries, and really just reflecting on my past.

I could continue with more “extraneous details” (hah), but I think I’ll end here 

:)