The Working Hour
I journal every single day. Throughout the day I jot down rhythms and pains and thoughts on little sticky notes, in order to document the flow of time that is what I call my life, especially the constant mental dialogue that is so much a part of me. At night, I furiously transcribe the day from the notes I made. But I am never caught up on my journaling. I am always a day or two behind. Especially of late, with my brain full to overflowing with observations and critiques and insights and story parallels. I feel I am about to burst with the burden of documenting my reality and my imagined inner landscape.
I have journaled daily, almost without fail, since I was 14 years old. That is almost 10,000 days in the life of a white, American, Southern female. Why do I do it? Inside countless spiral notebooks and journals with gilt edges and lined pages with nondescript covers and the little squares of Page-A-Day calendars lie the hopes and dreams and wounds of both the girl I used to be and the woman I've become. What purpose has it served?
I am not sure why I journal. Part of it is cheap therapy. Dumping emotions onto a page is cathartic and clearing. But I have no children who will care to read any of this when my ashes float on the wind along the flanks of Mt. St. Helen's. Who will really care about all this straining I do to document my days? It serves only a limited purpose to me in my life. I do sometimes go back and recount where I was and what I was feeling/digesting, but the journey I am on is so vast and so disjointed, it's not something I feel called to do much ... the rereading of my past. The tea leaves trapped in my journal are not a road map to my future; they are only a shadow of where I have been and what I have endured.
Part of the urge to journal is the sacred act of writing. This language I speak and write in, it is the air and water and earth to me. I have no existence without it. So journaling feeds me in a way, it feeds my soul (or what passes for my soul).
Mostly, I journal out of habit. What would it feel like to get into bed at night and merely read or watch TV? Countless millions of people do that exact thing each and every night of their lives, and no sky has fallen, no hearts have ground to a stop. What has driven me to do this for so many days in this life I have lived?
I have a friend across the country. She's about the same age as me, and she is riding this crazy wave of mid-life; it is equal parts insanity and instinct, the things she's doing lately. Witnessing the recount she makes of her exploits, her frantic running in front of this wave about to engulf her, I have to wonder ... what do we do in order to fulfill ourselves? What must be honored and observed? What must be ignored and buried? What is the point of all this anyway?
I suppose that's the hallmark of any solid mid-life crisis, the questioning of it all. Why are we here? What have I done with my life? With the ever-growing collection of my journals, I can console myself with the knowledge that I can at least document whatever I've done with the breath and time I have consumed.
After a permutation or two, this Vox was meant to serve a purpose called "Morning Pages." Morning Pages are a creative tool advocated by Julia Cameron in her The Artist's Way book/workbook. They are supposed to be purgative, to dump out the negative blocks to creativity from first thing in the morning and clear the way for true gifts from the subconscious. As is usual with me, though, I have twisted that intention because of the boatloads of negativity that needed clearling. And then I found I do my best musing late at night, when my inner voices still and the real inside bobs to the surface.
Lately the inner voice is hard to get along with, arugmentative and strident, like a spoiled child that will not be quieted or stilled. Like a spoiled child, there is no specific, finite demand made. There is only the persistent and constant wail for more. More attention, more affection, more healing, more bandwidth, more more more.
I am not a parent, not even to my inner child, and I am tired of giving more. I am ready to send myself to military school, where they will beat the spoiled, indolent child out of me and make me hard and resilient and unresponsive. Because I am tired of meeting my constant demands. I'm ready to just watch some TV and who cares what I thought about today? Who cares what I feel is lacking, or what I wish had been said or done?
Who cares?