I began writing in journals when I was 15. It occurred to me recently my relationship with journals began right after my father died. He was 55. I was 15. He was also my best friend in the whole wide world.

That my journal writing began after he died makes all the sense in the world. When a child (or adult, for that matter) suffers tectonic loss, the desire to find something that cannot be taken from you is instinctual.

My journals – one is in longhand, the other in word processing – are, as far as I’m concerned, one journal. Whichever one is close at hand is the one I use when the mood to journal beckons. I”d guess I have close to 100 journals from over the years

Journaling allows me to manage my relationship with my life. Some years ago, I don’t remember the moment or what, specifically, compelled me to do so, but I wrote about my relationship with my life in the third person. So, something like:  

* When I woke up this morning I did not want to get out of bed. Were it not for coffee, I’d still be in bed became, 
* when he woke up that morning he didn’t want to move. You couldn’t blame him. Although they’d been gone a long time, he was missing his family. His love of coffee got out of bed.

Notice, when writing in the first person I instinctively omitted my reasons for wanting to stay in bed. When I wrote in the third person, they stepped into the open, allowing me to gain an even clearer understanding of me and what, at the time, was keeping me in bed.

I still journal (write) in the first person most of the time. However, I write in the third person too. In the film industry they call it the third-person view. The eye of the camera. Another angle, another view, another insight.