As I began writing these essays, I reflected on the concept of journaling. I have attempted that so many times over my lifetime. I had the requisite diary that a young girl in the sixties would have. I am fairly certain that I no longer have that and, if I did, it would be sparse. Throughout the years I’ve purchased many a blank book and been given many more. During my training as a graphic artist, I had two hard bound “sketch” books. One was for drawings and the other for words. I still have that one. Tucked away, here and there, are other starts and stops at writing.
When I graduated from grad school, a party was thrown by dear friends and all provided me with a journal as I had a great idea. I’d been writing papers non-stop for two years (it was an online intensive program) and thought I would carry that through and keep writing. Work, life, and indecision about what to write got in the way. Most sat blank, and some still do.
At some point in my history, I’ve kept notebooks with checklists (about anything and everything), book lists, story ideas, and who knows what else. When Jeff had Leukemia, I had a book with a good day cover and, when you flipped it over, a bad day cover. I wrote a bit, but those days were hard to express in writing or any other method. I found that last year and tossed it. No sense in keeping any memories of that experience.
I believe I keep getting and starting notebooks for any number of reasons. 1. Hope. Hope that I will find a story that can become a book. 2. Instincts. My instincts often tell me to capture various bits of information that flow out of my mind just in case they lead to the #1 hoped-for concept. 3. Desire. I absolutely treasure writing supplies and desire having them all pretty and pristine. It started with day one of school and has never ended. Peechees, erasers, clean unlined paper, and three-ring binders still thrill me as do new pens and pencils, some antique leather binders I have, and anything that begs to be written in, on, or with. I have one or two of my original peechees, a big pink eraser from grade school, and a few odd old bits of pencil. When I do start using the shiny new purchases, though, they lose their luster somehow and I move on to another that beckons. Fickle is the word that comes to mind.
Writing these stories and putting them on a blog brought this all to mind. I decided to gather those journals and notebooks and scraps of paper to create a collection. It also fits with my goal to touch everything I own and decide the what, where, why, and when of those items. “Put like things together,” Pati has taught me.
Beyond that, though, I started thinking about journals as a collection. Tom Hanks started collecting typewriters and that became a book. Why couldn’t my dive into a lifetime of journals do the same? Not just my journals, although I think I will find nuggets to write about, but other people’s journals. People who really use the things to share their life story. Or maybe people who are more like me and don’t really get to the finish. Great idea, but my local used book purveyor died over a year ago and I don’t know of any others nearby that I would venture out to right now. eBay? I found some diaries of teenagers. Then, guess what. Of course there is an archive for ordinary people’s diaries at https://nationaldiaryarchive.com, and that led me to this cool blog written about diaries at https://sallysdiaries.wordpress.com/. And then I found a site about collecting diaries. Wow, this is a thing. A thing that can lead to many (too many) hours on the internet and an obsession that costs too much money.
I think I’ll stick to diving into my own history for now. To start, something I found yesterday. If you’ve read my Wynken, Blynken, and Nod post, you saw a reference to A Childs Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. I referenced the 1940 version. I also have one that I received in 1960. It was published with a copyright of 1929 and 1932 and is illustrated by Eulalie. Her name is printed as a signature and just that one name. It turns out this is Eulalie Minfred Banks, who lived from 1895 to 1999. Hey folks, that is 104 years! She illustrated over 50 children’s books, I learned. Her story and some wonderful examples of her art can be found here: http://alenquerensis.blogspot.com/2016/01/eulalie-banks-1895-1999-uma-artista.html This line is wonderful. She was illustrating for a women’s magazine, her teachers discouraged her from taking formal training feeling it may ruin her style and: “Eulalie protested that she wanted to be able "to do something big". "Well, go home and wash an elephant," was the mystifying but final reply.”
Anyway, I digress. Inside the book I found one of those many checklists I’ve made in my life. It’s a half page of a small size, lined paper. The type that was newsprint with blue lines, fairly far apart. It is titled, “Things I Need to Do At the troop meeting. I wrote too big and Things I Need to Do is across the top with a loopy arrow up and back to show it continues in smaller added print. I guess I needed to add the specifics about why/where these need to be done. Okay, so it’s after 1960 because that is when I got the book and really started to write, and I am still in scouts so probably before 1965. Here Is what I had to do – it’s all about getting badges (whereas, today, I’m more of a person who quotes “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!”).
Active Citizen – get time to Do #3, Books – Get 2-4-6-7 signed Get time to do #5, Home, Health & (only my ampersand was more like a plus sign with a left side loop – I’d forgotten all about those) Saftey (oops) get #4 signed, Magic Carpet get time to do 1-45 get also #7 signed Musician 5?
Wow, somewhere between 6 and 11 years old and already worried about finding time to meet goals. I was destined to be a project manager. Today, I would never make a list that ran on like that though as they always need to be tickable. Wait, that’s not entirely true. Sometimes I use up the paper and start writing in the spaces and margins. Still, each has a line of its own. Fascinating to investigate the history of your own thought processes. (Probably less so for you, the reader, oh well). It’s written in pen, so that pushes it to a later year in the range, and the first one is crossed out, but none of the rest. This is SO STILL ME! I make lists, I cross one or two off, and then move on. Sometimes, I start a new list and transfer unfinished tasks to that, and sometimes I save them in a stack, and other times I just toss it as what was on the list is no longer list worthy.
This little historic list is now lovingly back in the book on page 40 where it marks the poem “My Shadow.” You know, “I have a little shadow that goes in an out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.” Am I taking some of you back to your childhood?
And, dear reader, if you’ve gotten this far, I must tell you that I still have my Girl Scout book with guidelines and badge information (as well as the sash with the badges). I will be searching for that along with all my various journals. Let’s see how I did on that list and what other adventures we might find. Will it be a start of a book? I may have to read Hanks’ Uncommon Type to see how he parlayed an obsession into a collection of short stories. I can hope I’ll be inspired to do more than satisfy my desire to buy yet another pristine set of bound pages to add a few thoughts and move on.