The Perfect Presentation

I was first attracted to journaling in my college days when I visited a bookstore and meandered to the section with journals.  The shelves were filled with beautiful books of various colors and inspirations. I picked up a brown leather journal embossed with a compass and ran my hands over the cover.  Again and again.

Until that moment I didn’t have a driving desire to journal, but right then the simple feel of the journal drew me in and made me want to write. I imagined my pencil flowing over the pages;  charcoal tip weaving my words together, filling the book with all the thoughts that yearned to spill on to the page.

I put the journal back on the shelf.  Surely, I had plenty of empty notebooks at home in which to write, I told myself. After all paper was paper.

Once home, I found the notebooks at the bottom of a desk drawer, tucked away with all my other office supplies that I had but seldom used.  I took a notebook out of the desk, one three-fourths empty, left over from biology class where I had taken sporadic lecture notes. But the feelings I had experienced at the bookstore were gone.  The desire to begin my journey into the labyrinth of my thoughts and emotions had evaporated. All I saw when I looked at the used notebook was the C I had earned in biology.

Two days later I was back at the bookstore; back staring at the embossed journal.  As a student, the purchase of the journal was a definite luxury. I took a deep breath. Just this once, I thought. Just this once I will splurge.  I picked up the journal, hugged it close and headed to the cashier.

Home again, I sat at my desk and reverently took the leather journal out of its bag.  My fingers traced the compass. I slowly opened the cover. The yearning to feel the pencil glide over the page was strong.  I wanted my thoughts out of my head and on that page, raw and unapologetic. And I wanted that now.

I picked up my pencil, posed over the page.

My thoughts swirled, chaotic and fast. I couldn’t slow them enough to form a coherent thought.

I wanted to write but couldn’t.

The fear of writing unconnected garbled thoughts in sloppy handwriting stopped me from writing even one word.  For how could I blemish my beautiful journal? My beautiful journal that was a gift to myself.

And what if someone saw my messy incoherent ramblings? I couldn’t bear to be seen as a hot mess.

I carried that journal with me from class to class for the rest of that school year. Today, I thought every day, today I will write down my thoughts.

All those todays turned into tomorrows.

The journal remained beautifully empty.

Then I packed it up with all my other belongings and left college.  The compass embossed journal moved with me from state to state and house to house as I settled into life.  Soon it made its way to the back of the closet with my much-loved books from my teens that I couldn’t bear to part with.

Years passed.  I learned to place less importance on the cover of a journal and more on the contents I wrote within.  It was a hard lesson. And while I am still drawn to beautiful leather journals, I have surrendered the need for the perfect presentation of self.  I have sloppy entries and crossed out words. I have missed pages and skipped years in the same journal. I have even been known to write in cast-off notebooks. It wasn’t until I let go of the idea of a flawless journal entry that I was able to write without fear. Once I started using Prom[p]t as a guide,  my journaling gained depth and I began the exciting journey of discovering who I was at my core.

And whatever happened to that brown leather journal with the embossed compass?  I dug the journal out from under several boxes of papers and gifted it to a student of mine who had shared that she journaled as a way of processing her thoughts and making sense of life. I hope she has been able to look beyond the beauty of the journal cover and connect with her heart.

What has your journaling journey looked like? What has been your Prom[p]t journaling experience so far?

Love,

Andrea

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