On Being a Fickle Diarist

     I began keeping a journal in the eighth grade. My sister Alice, who was four years older, kept one—I would see her on pleasant days sitting against the trunk of our front yard tree, scribbling away in a red notebook. She encouraged me to start my own.

     I certainly am not the kind of diarist that feels compelled to write every single day, even if it's just about the weather or where I went or what I ate. I am also not the kind of diarist that can turn ordinary events into something extraordinary or profound or, at the very least, entertaining. Most of the time, I write only when I feel like writing, or when something happens that warrants recording—though there have been events, like the death of my father, that I simply couldn't write about. Yes, I go through phases when I feel obliged to write purely for the sake of exercising my writing muscles, which, from time to time, turn to flab (I'm going through one of those phases now, which is why I feel obliged to write this blogpost).

     As I type this, I reflect on the fact that I haven't written in my journal for many months. I feel a small twinge of guilt when I see the black Moleskine lying on the shelf near my bed. Sometimes I open it to my last entry and say to myself, Oh, you naughty girl, you really should write something. But then, the next moment, I think, Why? If I don't feel like it, why should I? Do I have anything important to write? Even if I don't, why can't I just write?  My life is small and uneventful, but so was Emily Dickinson's, and look what she managed to put on the page! Why can't I do the same?

     The answer that always comes is, of course, that Dickinson was a genius poet and I am not. Pepys was a master diarist, and I am not. I can only write what I write, when I can write.

     Still, like anyone else who has kept a journal for years, faithfully or not, my journal is unspeakably precious to me. It is my best friend, my closest confidante, my therapist—cliché, but nonetheless true. Sometimes after a long hiatus, I have a writing burst and everything I've held back in those silent months flows forth uninhibited, things I never knew were in there. It's like having a reunion with a great friend I haven't seen in a long time. Chatter, chatter, chatter. As if we'd never been apart. So I'm not greatly worried.