I see these tracks in the snow and I see that many of us are in the same position as the other. It makes me wonder if the difference between “unprecedented” and “precedented” is contingent upon how much we pay attention. // 2021.
This past year, my journal was filled with dates that had asterisks next to them denoting some kind of reminder. A caveat. *This was during the pandemic. *This was during an uprising. *This happened while I, and the world, was in a period of major unrest. *This was (also) unprecedented. There are many asterisks.
After so many months of this, it no longer seems significant to note these times as unusual. Yet making note of the abnormalities reminds me that there are better days to come and resolutions to be kept. Progress to be made. Years from now when I reread through these moments I hope to remind myself of some context. I hope to remember who was around me and where I stood and what all happened—and I want to remember how it all impacted how I thought.
In many ways, journaling is simply time-keeping. The dates are linear but the words rarely are. Some paragraphs end “I hope this is all over soon.” Some paragraphs begin “I worry this will last longer than any of us expect.” Markers of time and space exist within those pages. Later, I read phrases like “Oh how the world has changed” and “What a truly bizarre world we are living in now.” This kind of time keeping and context matched with the daily details often rounds out to an even clearer hindsight (and someday, progress.)
During the days and weeks where time seems to move particularly quickly, I feel the need to journal simply to document. I write to preserve things that are at risk of being forgotten. I document to make sure a moment (and the feelings that swarmed it) actually existed in the first place.
Lately, I find myself saving screenshots of the news alerts that show up on my phone’s lock screen. These days they seem to come in at an alarming rate, each more unbelievable than the last. Sometimes I save them because the news itself is particularly absurd. Other times, I want to record the irony as two alerts come in, one after the other, showing some kind of ridiculous juxtaposition. Maybe it’s some kind millennial way of clipping out newspaper headlines. Maybe it’s a disheartening way of asking the age old question “Where were you when…?”
But for all of the journaling I do to avoid forgetting, there is an equal amount that I do simply because I want to forget. My notes are the thoughts simmering in my mind—now, they boil over onto the page. Journaling, whether I’m documenting or processing, often reveals what my mind is most preoccupied with. Day to day I often find myself making some kind of prosaic to-do list before reminding myself to think less of logistics and more from a place of reflection (this is harder than it sounds.)
Whatever needs to be moved out of my brain space, I make room for on the page. Let us name the frustration, write it down, close the notebook and let go of it! This is why somewhere in an old journal with a puppy or a dolphin on the cover, scribbles from my younger self voice frustration with too-short playdates and hard, boring homework assignments. This is why, later in young adulthood, I wrote out my concerns with friendships and relationships whose conversations were improperly decoded instead of intentionally clarified.
When it comes to a period of growing pains (see: life), I imagine that journaling allows me to leave the pain on the page so that the majority of my present mind is focused on the learning experience and growth.
I can only hope that by putting some of this thinking on the page, I’ll be able to let go of past pain and process whatever remains into some kind of gratitude. Rather than asking myself how things came to be, I’ll focus mostly on the outcomes. The turmoil of the moment will be so far away that I’ll be convinced that time did indeed pass and that I did indeed change for the better. The context around events will be so obvious, I won’t have any choice but to say “That made sense.” I hope it will help me see that some histories won’t repeat themselves. At the very least, there will be a record and wherever there is a record, there is the potential for progress.
Smile. Give Thanks. Wave. Make Peace.
Lauren