12/04/07

A Journal of Journals

This wasn't like anything I have ever written before. To me it seemed I was writing a journal about my journals; which I think it actually is. It all seemed to come easy to me once my professor announced that we were going to write our own personal essays. I knew exactly what I wanted to write about and what I wanted to say. The only problem was time was against me.
It was the beginning of the fall semester and I was already drowning in the amount of
homework I had. I kept putting off writting my essay because it wasn't due for a few weeks and I had other homework I had to finish. Throughout that time I kept imagining how I was going to write this essay and how I was going to say the things I wanted to say. I would sometimes daydream in class of what I was going to write about and come up with all of these ideas while doing so. I was trying to just imagine what my paper wa going to be like. I knew writing straight from my journals would be impossible because I had threw them out a few weeks earlier during the summer. However, I knew it wouldn't be a problem because I had read through them before I threw them out and remembered what was written, just not word for word.
Time has always been an enemy of mine. Once I completed one project there were
more to take it's place. The due date for my personal essay was a week and a half away. I started to become desperate and realized the only way I would be able to complete all of my homework was to cut down my sleeping hours. Instead of waking up at around 9:00 each morning I would instead be up at around 6:00 or 6:30 just to be able to get my homework done and start my essay. I was exhausted but it had to be done. There were days that I would just wake up, take my dog for his morning walk, grab some breakfast, sit down on the couch, turn the tv and my laptop on and just start writing all while still being in my pajamas. Those are a few things I must do before I can even start writing. I have to be comfortable or else I will constantly be moving around and unable to write much. I can't be hungry or else all I will be thinking about is food and not write a thing. And I also need to have sound in the background. For some reason the silence bothers and distracts me. If for some reason I am writing while it's quiet I often just daze into space with the blank look on my face not knowing what to write about. I sometimes go to school early to do some homework and it would just be so hard for me to concentrate unless I could find a place where there were people talking in the background. I need sound even though I am not directly listening to what it is. It just needs to be there for me to write. I remember writing my essay at school and I was sitting on one of the chairs in the hallway by the window. It was a hot day with the morning sun starting to beat on my back and it was insanely silent. It was driving me nuts and I was getting frustrated that I could not write and I remember putting on a game so I could calm down. One other problem I have with
writing is that I am not able to write drafts. I would start out writing a draft but I would get so
caught up in my writing it would turn into my final paper. I have tried many times to write drafts but for some reason I can't that easily. After many many failed attempts of trying to start the essay I finally got to it. I was home and did everything I had to do to start writing this essay. The way that I began my essay was to first describe my surrounding, how it felt and what I was thinking. I wanted to give an image and a feel of what I was writing about to just give a better understanding for how it was. I then say that I found my one journal in my pill of junk and basically said that I was curious to find the rest because I had forgotten what was written in them. When I said what was in my journal in the beginning I wanted to give a sense of sadness because that is one of the things I wanted to talk about in my essay and get through to the readers. I also tried to make it clear that I had blocked out these memories from myself as if they had never existed and that there was no pain when there really was.
I hate them but I know I shouldn’t because that’s not what God would want.
I wanted to add this piece because this is one of the things that stood out the most to me
while I was reading the first journal. I wanted the readers to know from the beginning of how I felt about people and also the desire to please others. I wrote that mostly because of my father
because I thought him to be religious and wanted me to be religious also. I thought pleasing others before myself would make me happy; which I later learned wasn't all that true, and thought that would be something he would've wanted me to think.
I did want to put in a sense of happiness in there so that my readers wouldn't just be
depressed while reading. I wanted to talk about my pets because there were what made me happy back then because they were not only cute and cuddly they were always friendly and never judged me. The part of happiness is short and it goes straight back to what made me upset and what I was scared of. I wanted to mention the part of me starting to cry because one of the fears that I had had in my life was showing weakness and that was something I never wanted to show anyone.I then go for the second journal for to reasons in my writing. The first is because I didn't want to remember those memories at the moment and the second is that if I said everything I wanted to say it would have been too long and time was against me. I wanted to mention my first boyfriend mostly because that was a major change in my life since I was for the most part a loner. It was also a big disappointment in my life because that was mostly what the relationship was. Nothing but disappointment and further heartache.
He didn’t show up to the movies again. This has to be the third time this
month I think. I don’t understand why he doesn’t just call to say he can’t
come or ever apologize. He does this all the time.
I wanted to mention this part out of my journal to give an example of what it was like. I
wanted to give the reader an idea of what I had regularly went through while dating this one guy. And I wanted to finish off that part with us breaking up and that I was happier that we were and also for why he had broken up with me because that's not the kind of person I would ever want to be with.
The next part I wanted to go on to a happier note by mentioning my first dog, that I had
been wanting my entire life, and what I had to go through to get him. I also wanted to mention the part of my mother saying, "Oh my God, it's Cujo!" just because I find it so funny and wanted the reader to get a laugh out of it also. I wanted to put in some sense of enjoyment and happiness before I got to the next part.
It was the most tragic event of my life when my dog died. I can remember most of that
day so clearly with how perfect that day started and how it became the worse day of my life in
almost an instant. I wanted to give the reader a sense of what I had went through that day and the few days that followed. I loved my dog more than anything back then and would've gladly chose him over my boyfriends at the time. He was just that important to me.
I moved to the next journal because I didn't want to relive those painful memories and wanted to mention something on a lighter note by after how I had been treated by people that there were still good people around. I wanted to mention the trip to Esopus because I thought it was one of the better examples I could've given about one of my high school friends and what a nice guy he was that night. And I wanted to conclude my essay with how I met my fiance, what he has done for me, and how it's changed me to becoming a happier person.
I wanted this paper to show what a person's life can be like in the beginning with almost
no hope of there ever being any change to everything turning around for the better. I would like my essay to be much longer and more detailed since there are many things I've left out but once again time is my enemy.