16 MB
Sixteen megabytes.
That's how much hard drive space my journal, now in its 25th year, takes up in HTML format. I'm not sure if the first five years really count though — it's made up of a few personal essays I wrote for my high school English classes — but it's about the closest I get to the type of person I was as a teenager.
Sometimes, I go back and see what I did on a given date over the course of those 25 years. Most days, the journal functions as a mere record of what I did that day: the people I was with, the places I went, the events of which I took part or any of a number of myriad things I was able to remember about that particular day. Other days, I delve deeper, asking myself more difficult questions in order to extract some kind of meaning out of it all.
Most of the time, I'm just trying to capture a moment in time, a candid snapshot, if you will. Sometimes, it's a snippet of conversation. Other times, it's a small part of a larger narrative that takes days, weeks, or months to complete. Even then, the ending can be arbitrary. It's only when you put some distance between yourself and the story that you can make sense of it all.
I'm not always able to write a journal entry every day. Reasons why vary widely: I got home too late from a night out. Or I didn't feel anything that happened was worth writing about. Or I fell asleep before I could sit down and write. And so on and so forth.
While I find value in writing, I'm not convinced any of it has any value to anyone but myself, which is why I'm so bad about self-promoting my work, be it writing, cartooning, or photography. We are encouraged at church to let our voices be heard because we are told they have value — that what we say is important. It's not just so we can record our thoughts, but that others may gain wisdom from them, giving our words new life.
That's how much hard drive space my journal, now in its 25th year, takes up in HTML format. I'm not sure if the first five years really count though — it's made up of a few personal essays I wrote for my high school English classes — but it's about the closest I get to the type of person I was as a teenager.
Sometimes, I go back and see what I did on a given date over the course of those 25 years. Most days, the journal functions as a mere record of what I did that day: the people I was with, the places I went, the events of which I took part or any of a number of myriad things I was able to remember about that particular day. Other days, I delve deeper, asking myself more difficult questions in order to extract some kind of meaning out of it all.
Most of the time, I'm just trying to capture a moment in time, a candid snapshot, if you will. Sometimes, it's a snippet of conversation. Other times, it's a small part of a larger narrative that takes days, weeks, or months to complete. Even then, the ending can be arbitrary. It's only when you put some distance between yourself and the story that you can make sense of it all.
I'm not always able to write a journal entry every day. Reasons why vary widely: I got home too late from a night out. Or I didn't feel anything that happened was worth writing about. Or I fell asleep before I could sit down and write. And so on and so forth.
While I find value in writing, I'm not convinced any of it has any value to anyone but myself, which is why I'm so bad about self-promoting my work, be it writing, cartooning, or photography. We are encouraged at church to let our voices be heard because we are told they have value — that what we say is important. It's not just so we can record our thoughts, but that others may gain wisdom from them, giving our words new life.
Labels: writing
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