Note to Self: On Keeping a Journal and Other Dangerous Pursuits
Note to Self: On Keeping a Journal and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Samara O’Shea
One way I’ve been keeping the beasts on my back from completely dragging me under has been to keep a journal. Paper is patient, paper is kind, paper does not judge, or worse, tell you to buck up.
Inspired by Samara O’Shea’s Note to Self: On Keeping a Journal and Other Dangerous Pursuits, which my friend Felicia kindly sent along, I’ve taken to putting pen to paper in an attempt to pluck the nebulous threads of dread, doubt, and anxiety that have been swirling in my mental belfry ever since I got pregnant—and coincidentally, stopped taking my medication. It’s better than stress eating, anyway. The waddle of shame, it isn’t pretty.
Several nights ago, I hauled out a small cache of ZIP disks from under my desk, one of which contained the on-and-off digital meanderings of my 19- and 20-year-old incarnations, back in the pre-blogging Pleistocene when we had “homepages” and my e-mail handle was “starbuck” because I was an X-Files-loving nerd. (Not that I don’t rock out my nerdtastic self on occasion today; as that old chestnut goes, the truth will always out.)
Rifling through my own past, I was startled at some of the wisdom I manifested almost 10 years ago. Here’s one passage, dated March 28, 1999, that gave me pause:
Sometimes I wonder what the big deal is all about but I always come up empty when I try to think of an answer. Causes, peope need causes. Reasons, points of being, compass needles, central foci. What if the universe just is and we should stop trying to fathom some deep, inexplicable answer that in all likelihood doesn’t exist, isn’t there; nada, zip, bust.
What if we’re all just running around in circles, chasing our own tails, drunk with ourselves, going nowhere. Everywhere. Anywhere. But always in the same place. Back where we’ve started. Because we’re all fooled into thinking that there’s a means of escaping, but how the hell do you run away from yourself?
I also found my mother’s no-bake-cheesecake recipe, so I declared the spelunking session a win.
