My Own Personal Journal

FIRST! I have an awesome cousin named Emalee with a really cool blog. She is doing an auction for March of Dimes, and I want to help her with it. March of Dimes is a foundation that helps mothers have full term pregnancies and researches problems that threaten the health of babies. For more information, go here! Check out her blog if you want to participate in the auction!

Now on to the rest of the blog.

A lot of people treat blogs like they are their own personal journal. At least, they say they do. I certainly hope that's not really what they're doing because it feels like the stuff they blog about is really pretty shallow, nothing like the stuff normal people write in their journals.

I like to make the public laugh, because laughing makes others feel good, and that makes me feel good.

Recently we've been talking some about journals in church, and we've been encouraged to keep a journal. That's not a problem for me! I already do that. A quite regular journal.

And I want to share some of my past journals with you.

One of the best things about journals is for one, they can help you see how you dealt with mistakes and hardships, thus showing you how to cope with them in the present or future. That's awesome. But for me, the best thing my past journals have done is provide comic relief.

I started a journal when I was six. It said "Diary" on the front of it in cursivey curly writing, and two kittens were on the front, curled up in a manner that made them look like hearts.

I spoke about all sorts of things! And everything was misspelled. Deeare Dieyareey... something like that.

Entries ranged anywhere from

"Dear Diary, I have too many boyfriends. I don't know what to do."

to

"Dear Diary, I'm afraid of my parents dying."

Yes, those are actual entry synopses from my six year old first grade mind.

My favorite journal was probably my high school freshman journal. My family used to do a lot of "Family Story Time" and that summer was the first summer we didn't do a daily story time. That time was filled with watching Disney movies. No no no, not the classics. I'm talking Disney Channel movies. Those rocked. Those were what hip high school freshmen watched!

And one that forever made an impression on my mind was "Read it and Weep", the story of a girl who's private journal was published for the world to read. It was fascinating to me. I knew my journal would never be published... but I decided to keep a daily journal. That was my goal. And it would have pictures, and talk about all sorts of things.

Since this Disney movie made such an impact on my life... I realized that my journal would be crap if I didn't talk about boys for 99% of the entries. One boy, preferably. So I picked one. A single boy. Matt.

Matt didn't know me really. We had a class together, but we never had sit down talky talky get to know you kind of things. But I was so desperate to write about a boy, that I picked Matt to be my obsession. No reason why... just because.

I would change lyrics of songs. Since we didn't know each other, let alone have any kind of relationship... I would change lyrics from being this:

"We kissed! My heart did a wizbang, flipflop! Heaven! For a minute!"

to this:

"We sharedaglance! My heart did a...." And so it goes.

I would write all sorts of stuff in their about how we were going to get married. I planned our wedding.

I learned around November of that year, that Matt was what some might call a nerd. So was I. So was everyone I associated with. But I was obviously in denial, that really influenced my life. Around that time, my journal read something along the lines of

"I am having such a hard time right now. I want to do the right thing for myself and my future family but HOW CAN I DO THAT IF I MARRY A NERD?! Oh WOE is me!!! How could I let my heart become subject to such a glorious man! A man who is a NERD! SOB SOB SOB!!!"

I found out around December that I had been spelling his name wrong the whole time. "Mat." His name was "Matt." My bad....

I drew pictures of our wedding. It was beautiful.

St. Patrick's day, I went to a Stake Dance. And a boy asked me to dance for the FIRST TIME! It was awesome. I really enjoyed dancing with him. But I had inner turmoil.

"Today I danced with my friend. It was so much fun. What if I'm supposed to marry HIM!? OH NO! WHAT HAVE I DONE?! No. No, no, no, no. Breathe. It's ok. You're supposed to marry Matt. But you'd better go repent because you just committed adultery in your mind by even thinking that you're supposed to marry someone else. Time to confess, you're in deep trouble. You'll never be a good wife. You'll remember this moment your entire life, the one moment when you considered marrying a different man."

Other journal entries read something like:

"Today I followed him around after school. He was holding hands with another girl. I think I'm going to die."

"He told a story today, and he looked in my direction the ENTIRE TIME! OH MY GOSH! He loves me. It's official. Might as well set my fb status to engaged, because uh... that's what we are."

Matt graduated, and I had this elaborate plan worked out where I'd go to his mission farewell, and get his address from his sister, and write him, and he'd fall in love with me and we'd get married. It was a match made in heaven.

You know how 6th graders are sure they are so much mature than 5th graders? That's what it was like for me when I became a Junior. I read that journal. I was like...

"Oh em gee, that is lyke so totes drah mah filled! I've got to lyke get it out of my life for like real! Otherwise people will think I'm weird because I keep my own journal! Not cool!"

So I destroyed that journal. I tore the cover off, tore up all the pages. And threw it away.

Since, you know, the only way to get drama out of your life is by doing it in the most dramatic way possible.

Now looking back, I really wish I had saved that journal. Because I'm pretty sure I could have actually published it and made a fortune.

Moral is? Don't destroy your journals.

I'm a regretful not-billionaire. Pity me as you will.