There is something magical* about a blank journal.

A blank journal is all about potential. I pick them because the cover is sturdy or pretty, or the paper is heavy and rich or light and delicate. I choose based on colors or images or how my favorite pens feel when I write in them. I select a journal because it fits with a story I’m telling in my head about the person I am today, or the person I want to be when I write in it. In the end, there is a universe of meaning imbued in every new journal.

They’re all empty.

I write in the cheap college-ruled Mead or generic Mead-like single-subject notebooks I buy at Staples. I don’t prefer writing in them. They irritate me. The paper is rough and ink tends to leach out in microscopic webs on the tiny fibers poking out every which way. The covers bend too easily, and I keep getting cardboard cuts from them. The spiral bindings get caught on threads in my backpack and stretch out, so I inevitably have part that is now too tight and restricting the paper, and the long tail that now gets caught on absolutely everything. But I’m not afraid to write in them. There’s nothing important about a notebook like that. Nothing weighty or meaningful.

I just don’t write in the fancy journals, though. You’re probably wondering why. It’s because those beautiful, empty journals have meaning. They are full of glorious purpose, just waiting to be fulfilled. I do not feel equipped, talented enough, to help them meet their potential. My writing is noise, and these deserve to be filled with poetry and music. Once I write in them, all they’re full of is regret.

I can’t quite make myself give up on buying them, though. So every so often a new one whispers to me. It tells me stories about what it could be, and I buy it with every intention of writing in it and merging its story with my own. I don’t. I put it on the shelf with the other journals, where they sit in dusty splendor and that is a story, too. A story of missing opportunities. A story of regret.

Speciously yours,

Wendy

 

*I say this a lot about writing and writing-related topics. Really. A LOT.

When I think about writing, I generally have some differing opinions. First, writing is arcane. There is a magic to it. You think something, you write it down, other people read it and internalize the message, thereby converting it into their own thoughts. Magic!*

Second, writing is work. I have a million and one ideas all the time racing around in my head for what to write about, but the minute I sit down in front of the computer or with my journal and pen I am completely lost. I doodle, or I google, or I spend time cleaning up ancient blog posts or playing Bookworm or FTL. The work of writing drives all the creative animus out of me, and I end up either farting around with something trivial or time-wasting, or I give up and go do something else. Usually playing Bookworm or FTL….

Third, deep, deep down in the dusty, spider-infested, creaky, junk-filled corners of my psyche I have this belief that things that I post on the Internet should be Important. Even if they’re not important to everyone else, they should be Important to me. If I’m not writing about something I’m passionate about, I should really just stop trying to blog anything at all and just write my name five hundred times in my Moleskine journal.

Fourth, in the same area as the idea that I should be writing about Important Things is the sneaky suspicion that I’m just not good enough at writing to do this. The imposter syndrome of which so many pop-psychs speak, wherein people (usually read as “women,” but should be read as “people”) believe that they don’t actually deserve their successes. For me, it manifests as a sense of dissociation. I feel like I’m in a poorly-constructed fantasy that will be blown apart as soon as a mysterious “someone” pops out of the woodwork and shouts, “Aha! You are a fraud!”

So here we are. Specious Logic. Whether I’m good enough or not, whether I’m worthy or not, I’m going to be trying to post some thoughts on a semi-regular basis. Being me, these thoughts will be 60% bullshit that I pulled out of my (ample) assets, and 40% researched-to-hell-and-back-my-god-why-are-there-so-many-citations. I like to form my half-baked opinions on research. It’s a thing.

Speciously yours,

Wendy

 

*sometimes I imagine myself in a pointy, black, wide-brimmed hat and a raggedy black robe standing over a smoking, glowing cauldron throwing in word-snippets and sentence fragments and cackling madly…