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Ice and isolation

January 30, 2011 //  by Terra Osterling

Snowbanked

The depths of winter are a place of stark realities.  Last week, winter nearly froze me in place.  It works like that for those of us who live deep in winter country, literally and figuratively.  Snow banks the size of Volkswagen beetles tag team against us alongside the insurmountable obstacles of our psyche.  Winter is a mental season as well.

Last week’s post sparked some conversation about the “nature” of “winter,” where one friend pointed out to me that when we are isolated from others by all that is winter (single digit temperatures, 8 inches of snow in 8 hours, dusk at 4:30pm), there is no place to hide from yourself.  That got me thinking about self-awareness, introversion, and unabashed navel-gazing.  I think of my journal.

Moleskine journal and Parker pen

Dear Diary

It is a cold January morning when I am nine years old making my first journal entry, starting with “Dear Diary…”  It was a small hardcover with a tin lock and key.  I say “was” because all that remains is the first nine pages ripped out and tucked into the inside cover of the next journal book.

Those nine pages, penciled in atrocious chicken scratch, span about 2 ½ years – I was not prolific .  But even then, as now, a large portion of my journal entries are dated during the winter months.  Because apparently I have nothing better to do except think and write during the annual glacier creep.  Winter isolates, and in isolation I turn to my journal. I am grateful to my past selves for taking the time from hibernation to set down my thoughts.

I’m my own voyeur

A journal is a first person account of your own life; a gift we give to our future self in a set of experiences freshly recorded.  I am a voyeur looking in on my own past life.  More accurate than memory,  self-help from the Self.

Without my journal, I could not have come to understand the truths of why I do the things I do when I do them.  I could not have been able to trace my path of unrest, seeing the patterns of my reactions to job experiences good and bad (both the experiences and the reactions).   Being the only place where I have consistently written during my entire life, I have, in essence, all along been writing my own guidebook for changing my life.  On the gratification spectrum, journaling is long-term.

Time Traveling

28 years worth of journals

The seventeen journal books on my shelf are varied in size, shape and color – a couple of basic Composition notebooks from the college era,  fabric-covered bound books, over-sized tomes, and then the basic black Moleksine brand I have been using for the last six years. Periodically, I run my hand over the spines of my journals and open to a moment in time from the last 28 years of my life. I read randomly, or look for the same month and day to reach back exactly 5, 10, 20 years in my life.

Grab a pen

During these winter months, spend some time keeping a diary.  It’s never too late to start a journal, just like it’s never too late to start exercising.  You will get out of it what you put into it.  Write about what you ate, who you talked to, how you felt.  Chronicle your comings and goings, emotional and otherwise.  Be brutally honest with yourself; express every insecurity and every joy in words that come out naturally.  Do this as often as you feel like and eventually you will fill a book, and then another.  Then you can start time-traveling.

A pattern of gloom between November and March may urge you to get tested for Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Frustrations with failed relationships might shed light on your roles in situations, and how to avoid it in the future.  The breathless joy of falling in love will be forever preserved.  With a journal, you whisper all these to the most sympathetic, non-judging ear:  your own.

A real scorcher

If you’re going to be snowed in literally or figuratively, you might as well try something new.  January offers me few comforts, but I can open to journal pages from summers ago and read about how I felt and what I did during a particularly scorching heat wave…priceless.

Have you ever kept a diary? Do you want to start?

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Category: Creative Pursuits, Experiences, How I got "here", Inspiration, MotivationTag: Dear Diary, Keeping a journal, Moleksine journal, Parker Pens, Self-awareness, Winter blues

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Comments

  1. morninglightmama

    January 31, 2011 at 4:42 PM

    Oh, I have some journals from the past, and some parts make for PAINFUL reading. For most of my life, I was most compelled to journal when I was pissed off or depressed, so they’re really not fun to read and (I hope) don’t give a full picture of my life as a whole. Since blogging, I’ve been able to be a bit more varied in my emotional output in writing.

    I imagine that it’s an interesting experience to go back and get a slice of your life in your own words!

    • suddenwriteturn

      January 31, 2011 at 5:54 PM

      Ah, yes, there are pages upon pages of angst in my journals. Pain, sadness, frustration, rage – it’s all there. But there’s a lot of “good” stuff too. Truly a walk through time. I’ve thought about whether a blog is comparable, and for me the answer is “no”. Maybe some people can do it online, but I can’t take the filter off outside of my journal. Nobody wants to see that. 😉
      Good to see you back online!

Trackbacks

  1. Now for something completely different | SUDDEN WRITE TURN says:
    February 9, 2014 at 2:04 PM

    […] I sometimes thumb through my old journals. A year ago during the same January week as my diagnosis, I was working on a marketing campaign for myself and struggling with the first of what would become more than a dozen drafts of my article for Adirondack Life. I was assessing my progress almost a year into full-time freelancing, feeling the dull weight of winter pulling on me, but still marveling at my first glimmers of success. I closed that day’s entry by writing: […]

  2. We interrupt this program for breaking news « Sudden.Write.Turn. says:
    June 26, 2011 at 4:22 PM

    […] reading through my journal entries of our Adirondack hikes over the past few years, I settled down to write about my experience with […]

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