Dec 10 2008
Writers: Share a Clip From Your Journal
I’ve climbed up on the soapbox more than once about the value of keeping a personal journal – especially for those who are interested in writing. Whether you write by hand in a paper notebook or enter your daily entries in your computer, journaling is one of the best things you will ever do for yourself.
So, I want to know if you are taking advantage of this high-return, no-risk, low-cost self-investment opportunity. In fact, not only do I want to hear whether or not you keep a journal, but I want you to do something daring: I want you to submit, in a comment, an excerpt from one of your journal entries.
The excerpt can be short or long. It can be from yesterday’s entry or from a dusty diary decades old. It can be deeply personal or not.
This is your chance to expose yourself in the way writers love to expose themselves: with words that reveal their minds, hearts and souls … or just their day-to-day activities.
So please, take my challenge.
In case you’re thinking that I should lead the way with something of my own, I offer the following, taken from a journal entry I made late at night after my daughter’s wedding.
March 13, 2003: Little Jenny got married today. It’s 11pm and we’ve been up since about 3am. I tried and succeeded in not getting emotional through the wedding ceremony and then the program at the wedding dinner, where I conducted and had to talk about her life. I did okay until the very end. But then Jenny came running back into the room a few minutes after leaving with Tom with tears in her eyes to tell me how much she loved me. I couldn’t help crying and Jenny’ friends all crowded around and hugged me. How I love that little angel. She needs so much care and love. God, please take care of her. Tonight I cried. For all that was. For all that will never be again.
Using that excerpt was not easy for me. It was very personal – way beyond my typical limits – but I hope that if I do it, you will feel comfortable revealing a personal journal entry of your own.
Please share.
October
Paralyzed by a sense of fear. Fear of movement. Fear that a commitment to any one direction would close all the doors to happiness. Those doors creak slowly closed as I sit here, paralyzed.
My fear will be my undoing. It is this fear which I must face so that I may seek happiness in earnest. It is not the doors closing that worry me so. It is commitment to happiness that strikes this fear into my heart.
But how to fight that which one cannot face? How to fight the darkness when one has no light? I have the tools to make the light, yet I cannot stand the thought of failure. Even though I know better, I choose to sit with a lacking rather than run the risk of not succeeding.
It appears that success is not what I crave, but instead complacency. A middle ground where I neither win nor lose.
Happiness sacrificed for apathy. It creates stresses that cannot endure. They can not go on; and eventually action will replace apathy. A direction will have to be chosen and doors will have to be closed. The time draws nigh.
Which direction will I choose? Which doors will I shut forever? What unknowns will I leap into?
Up until this point, any attempt that I have made to keep a journal has been to no avail. Everytime I try to write soemthing down, my mind starts racing with all kinds of other great ideas that I end up having a sort of brainstorming session with myself. crazy, I know. So, with that, I will start one right now. Here, is my first journal entry.
12/11/08
This evening, I was browsing through the book “If” by Evelyn McFarlane and James Saywell. I came across a question that got me thinking very deeply. The question is not important but it accomplished its goal. The question was (not an exact quote. to the effect of):
“What would you say is the best lesson you’ve learned up until this point?”
*Insert* I implore you to ask yourselves the same question.
I would have to say, that of all the lessons that I have come across, the single one that has had the most impact would be the power of choice. The fact that no matter what, I decide.
Viktor Frankl states that the only thing that no one can ever take from us is our freedom. Not the freedom to do what ever we want, that’s Liberty. the freedom that he speaks of is the freedom to choose.
While we cannot always control what will hapen to us or around us, we can always control what will happen inside of us. the choice is truly ours.
Now, building on that, I have to ask myself…is what i am deciding (to do; to think; my attitude) going to contribute to what I plan for my future?
hmm…
A few points. I’m 19, and hence have a quite frankly embarrassing amount of unused emotion that needs to go somewhere. Also, while I still think of this as a valid argument, much experimentation proved that no, it’s not for me.
Thankfully no one will ever know that this is me. The anonymity of the humble comment box.
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Monday
The life well lived is one racked by problems. And it’s in the name of assuaging these problems that alcohol provides a particular kind of welcome release.
There are two kind of drinkers; there are those of the lesser classes, who live those unexamined lives deemed so unworthy by Socrates and his pupils; these are those who drink because they have nothing else to do. These are those who drink through lethargy, and depression, and a lack of direction and vigour in their lives. These are the scum of society, and must be discarded as such from our thoughts.
There are those of the higher intellectual class. That is to say, there are those who go through their sober lives possessed of an unavoidable perspective. They hold a world view racked with the obviousness of the flaws and problems so endemic to how others live their lives. They see the problems that seem to go ignored by society as a whole, either through ignorance, or simple tolerance. They see these issues, and they do not just allow them to wash over their world view, as some feature of society to be accepted and ignored. They see these issues, and they care. They worry. They see men who waste their talents, and men who act with intention, and they despair. “Are they aware? Do they have reason? Do they care? Are they simply passive, controlled by these higher, invisible-to-them thoughts?”. This is what they ask themselves. And they wonder.
They wonder, and they care, and they wonder why there is nothing to be done about this. They see the mistakes that people make, and they see the obvious reasons for those mistakes, not even apparent to the individuals, perhaps through an inability to form thoughts of a inner, inquisitive, retrospective nature. They see people that lead themselves thoughtlessly into a cycle of eventual damage and distress, from which they must be rescued. And they feel a need to do something about this. They feel a responsibility; they feel a need to rescue these individuals; they see their plight, they know their pain, and they know, through comparison of shared experience, the solution. And they have a choice; do they act on this clear solution as it stands in their mind, or do they do nothing, and damn the consequences.
No man of suitable, correct intellectual capacity will allow evil to continue unchallenged. And this consequence of human ignorance presents itself to the consciousness as ignorance, that is, in need of enlightenment. There comes an urge to save, an urge to push these individuals to the life of awareness and consciousness that the intellectuals understand. They see the reasons and external consequences that determine every act, and they wish to show them. They are as Plato’s prisoner, returned to the cave, possessed of that noble-if-ignorant virtue of heroism, with intent of saving everyone and everything from that helplessness of thought.
And every attempt falls false.
Every attempt is viewed as nothing more than compartmentalization and labeling. Every attempt is a kind of patronization; it sets those who do not share the view of the individual as something to be understood, as an object of study. And it fails. And this is the torture of the aware. They see, and they understand, and they know, what is wrong with the world. And they can do nothing, not a single thing, to affect it. They stand, aware, conscious, of what is fated to happen, and what will happen, and powerless to stop it. They watch those that they love fall to these forces, and they despair. To the mind that lives the life examined, refuge seems impossible. Which is why they drink.
There is no logical solution to this pain. This is a pain that comes from knowing that every other is doomed to pain, and torment, and loss, and damage, and knowing that there is nothing to be done about it. No solution is forthcoming. No action is possible. You have to stand there, knowing this consequence, and accepting. But acceptance is impossible. What man would be happy knowing things such to be the state of the world? Instead, these men drink. Drink dispels such worry. Drink dispels such thought of consequence. Drink is the consequence. Drink is the solution. Drink is that which makes you cease to worry. Drink is what beings you back to earth, provides solace from the cacophony of depression that might engulf your mind. Drink is that which keeps you sane and keeps you safe and keeps you cheered despite this. To the sober intellectual mind, life is nothing but a tragedy, laid out before you. To the drunk intellectual; it does not matter. When drunk, nothing matters. The concerns of those external do not matter. Nothing is of importance. Nothing brings these thoughts of depression on you. Nothing makes you fear the future, and fear what WILL happen to others as a result of these laws of life.
Drinking, in essence, is solace. Drinking brings peace. Drinking drowns out the pain that is doomed to affect the world. Drinking drowns out concern. Drinking bring clarity, drinking brings strength. Drinking brings a platform to stand above the madness, and the pain, and the hurt, where all that matter is yourself. It provides an abstraction. It provides a platform where the problems of the feeble are nothing but sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It amplifies the problems of the self. Those problems truly endemic to the individual, gain new strength. But this is a refuge still. This is refuge from those problems that exist without solution. These are problems which bring oneself pain, and which oneself can solve. And this is the best we might hope for, in these days of pain and concern. Concern is the worst of the virtues.
6-7-08
It’s Saturday night. It’s still around 80 & very humid–AC on, Butterbean a-snooze, Midnight Special in its final quarter-hour.
Belmont Stakes: the Derby & Preakness winner, the world-beater Big Brown, finished…..
dead last. His principal challenger, Casino Drive, was pulled from the race this morning with a stone bruise to his hoof. Da’Tara was the wire-to-wire winner. Big Brown’s triumph in the Belmont was “a foregone conclusion” to his trainer earlier in the week. Hubris, rewarded: “He was outta gas,” said his jockey afterward; “I had no horse.”
Charlie Rose did a glowing profile of Big Brown last night–co-owner, trainer, jockey, exercise rider all interviewed… wonderful equine love fest.
I note that the temperature at the track reached 96 degrees. I wouldn’t run in that, either. Good boy, Brownie!
Not Writing Log
Wednesday 2-21-07 5:35 pm (Ship’s Log: Entry 2, or Star Wars: Chapter 5, Princess L. Gets Her Hair Done)
This evening I looked up Benchley’s Love Conquers All and ran across “The Whole Tooth…” I laughed out loud several times—probably more laughs in the piece than in my entire works, which are available in foolscap (Volume I, The Descent of Man). Word has just notified me that I have incorrectly used “which”. I need to prefer “that”—saves backspacing and inserting a comma. (Note: Make previous sentence a footnote in the rewrite.)
Where was I before Word struck with its green ink? Benchley, the genius. And what prompted me to read the Master and further depress myself? It was the news about this year’s Benchley Contest, from Our Mutual Friend Horace Dickens, who kindly notified club members, or at least those of us still able to pry open e-mail or read directly from the web site.
I have mixed feelings about entering the contest this year. I am somewhat handicapped in that I haven’t written anything since last May—I’ve been busy following the news and running the country. But the thrill of watching the commentators on TV is gone; I think they can carry on without me.
So I should have time to write something. Yet I never do. Why is that you suppose? (You need not answer this—I’m just talking to myself and a fine conversation it is for someone in the throes of Not Writing; it is encouraging that the patient (me) can still talk.
To return to my mixed feelings (paragraph 3)—good to know I can still make those subtle transitions. I was somewhat put out by the results of last year’s contest. I learned that I wasn’t even in the also- ran category; that I was not even included in the non-winners of the second heat, a race for all the horses that might have as well have stayed in the barn.
But beyond losing the contest I was quite vexed that the winner turned out to be a professional, well-known humorist who has books to his credit and even a TV show and maybe a movie in the works. I thought the contest was for struggling, obscure humor writers were trying to gain a leg up in the literary world.
I have in the past year said unkind things to myself about Mr. Big Shot Humor Writer. I even made a note of what I’ll say when I give my Oscar Speech for best screenplay adapted from another source (my memoirs: The Prairie Years: 1910-1950, Volume I)
I was planning to look directly in the camera after thanking my all my WWH Pals and everybody I had ever met in my earthly journey and finish with a line for the aforementioned, unnamed humor writer. I would say: “Thanks for nothing, W. Bruce!”
***a treat to see Robert Benchley mentioned! Merely seeing the reference to “The Whole Tooth” had me rolling on the floor, laughing! No need to re-read the story — and that right there, pals, is an example of spot-on humor writing1