My Syndicated Life: Why You Should Start A Journal

I spent the better half of the last two weeks reuniting with blasts from the past like every other television show cast coming together after being off the air for years. We talked about things we saw on each other’s social media feeds like our lives were syndicated classics playing in the background. The video streaming and conference calling replaced the feeling of knowing everything about some of these people, but not truly knowing who they have become as individuals. Reaching out to life’s puzzle pieces of the past was a nice reminder that things haven’t always been bad and that things will eventually get better.

My best friend of 23 years, also called to catch up from the day we went without talking. We laughed for hours about all the random stuff we did growing up and how the rigidity of living in uniforms while attending a strict Catholic school couldn’t contain us.

“How do you even remember that?” my best friend asked, referring to the details I pulled out of my head about a specific event.

In her defense, the memory of my childhood can be recalled on a whim a lot easier than most. Like SNL cast member, Aidy Bryant’s most recent sketch, I too have been religiously writing in a diary since I was eleven years old. Most of the earlier entries are terrifying to read due to grammatical issues, but somewhere stuffed in my childhood bedroom are my very first journals that have chronicled my thoughts and all of the significant events in life.

I try to begin each new diary gifted from friends (or bought by me from that really kooky section of Barnes and Noble with the pretentious leather-bound journals handsewn from Italian craftspeople and “As Seen On TV” gems) like a sci-fi drama TV writer getting the viewers up to speed from season break. I address my writing in my journals as I do my blogs, to me, no one, and everyone else on the planet.

Sometime during the air of mystery that sparks ghost stories in late nights or early mornings, you’ll see me scribbling and hiding my pen and paper like Winston Smith of Oceania in 1984. It’s not for fear of Big Brother, but rather habit from having my little sister bust into my room like the terrifying 90’s classic Kool-Aid Man for most of my life. I do it for me to read one day when I need to refer to a specific story with my best friend, as a form of therapy, because it would be weird if I just stopped now, and to share things I create with other people.

Writing could be used as a really cool tool in your own life if you like stories. When you write, you end up telling, listening, reading, and understand stories that could be used as allegoric tales of adventure or literal potty jokes held to esteem by scholars all over the world for hundreds of years. *Cough Shakespeare* We write to share our experiences, exchange information, and grow. I heard somewhere that if you write and tell stories often enough that you better at it, or whatever. It makes writing in a journal feel like the ultimate life hack.