On My Mind

When I first started this blog, I struggled with the themes that I wanted to touch on. I decided to keep it light - mostly about my art and cute things about my family. I've always been a hardcore journal-keeper

I have been keeping a journal since I was 9 years old. In my Sunday school class, we had a lesson about the importance of keeping a journal and made construction paper/binder paper journals of our own to take home. Mine was purple and I wrote "Heather's Journal" in my best cursive writing on the front cover and decorated it with pictures of flowers. Another little girl in class told me I was going to get in trouble for writing in cursive. Jerk.

That journal was the first in a long, loooooooong line of journals that I have made and kept over the years. My first entries consisted of observations about family life ("Dad is putting in a garbage disposal today and he's really grouchy") and made-up things about my dolls and stuffed animals. Later on, I progressed into longer treatises about love, my weight and other worries.

In 1999, I had my second serious love affair which was detailed minutely in my first computerized journal entries. The affair ended really badly and I left off writing in a journal. I deleted all of the journal entries from my hard drive (I *did* keep a copy on a floppy, buried at the bottom of my desk drawer - ignored and avoided for years) and couldn't bring myself to write anymore. My whole life was so full of pain and I had no desire to leave a record of it.

I've heard that people write in journals to work out their pain. For myself, I hate re-reading about horrible events in my life. Because I have no depth of understanding during those times, those entries are nothing more than sharp and stinging cries of pain. They are confused ramblings of a mind that is trying to make sense of a bewildering and chaotic situation. It's like listening to a baby cry when you can't comfort it. I used to be able to handle grief, but the older I get, the less able I am to process pain and discomfort. I didn't watch Titanic because I knew everyone died. Ouch. I am not an emotional junkie. I'm more of emotionally autistic...

So, my journal-keeping has been spotty at best over the last 10 years. I go in fits and starts. This blog is my latest attempt at being a regular journal-keeper again. The problem is, my life is not limited to just art.

My life is made up of work, my still-new-to-me marriage, the lingering repercussions of my husband's LAST marriage (read: his ex), my kid and my step-kids (hereafter referred to simply as 'kids'), my art, my cooking, my messy house, my weight, my infertility worries, my psycho family, my faith and other random thoughts. If I keep this blog only to record my art/craft things, I am going to be missing out on 90% of my life. It's very hard to edit out that much of life from my thoughts.

So... question: can I allow myself to feel free to write of other things? Do I have to do this for an audience? I, of course, will still share my art stuff, but I will probably have more entries dealing with day-to-day life. I need to be brave.