The Cursed Journal

I'm eastbound on I-74 in Indiana, about 40 miles east of Indianapolis. As I think I mentioned, I'm headed to Charlotte, North Carolina. I've been thinking about my blog. Journal. Diary. Whatever you want to call it. I've gotten to where I don't much like messing with it.

Actually, it might be more accurate to say that I haven't liked what I've written for quite some time now. I've struggled with the very idea of a journal. Quite often, posting to this “body of work” is a goal unto itself. Writing is the point of writing, whether or not I have anything to say. That seems destructive to me. Or at least it's a negative.

At one point my journal had evolved into something of a monologue based upon my experiences on the road and the thoughts that accompanied them. That all changed when Mara left me. There was the expected period of grief and depression, during which I obsessed about what I was feeling and experiencing. There was a lot of self-indulgent whining. But I think everyone, myself included, assumed that I would eventually emerge on the other side.

I thought I had. Or at least I thought I was beginning to. For the most part, I stopped obsessing about Mara and what she did, and grieving the loss of my home and my former life. But one thing did not change. I still spent most of my energy examining my emotions and emotional processes. I didn't return to the monologue.

I suppose every journal is an exercise in self-examination, but it's pointless without context. And the context is what I've dropped.

I've realized that large parts of my life are falling through the cracks while I spend my time and energy bitching about how unhappy I am and how much this or that sucks. Maybe it's time I try to go back to commenting on the interesting and positive parts of my life, and stop being so obsessed with the negative.

Let's try that.

I'm climbing the hill to the bridge on I-275, coming out of Indiana into Kentucky, and am about to cross the Ohio River. The countryside in Indiana and Ohio along the river is flooded. Here and there an almost full moon breaks through the cloud cover, its reflection dancing across the waters that seem to stretch to the horizon. Looking out across this “seascape”, broken up only by the shadowy shapers of trees rising up defiantly out of the waters, I heard myself say, simply, “That's pretty”.

It was a nice moment. I think it has to be better for my spirit to write about moments like that than to bitch about sitting in a dock for four hours this afternoon.