I will be 70 in October of this year. It is not a stretch to say I’ve had my journal as my companion for more than half a century. Journaling has been around for a long time. Leonardo Da Vinci had filled some five thousand pages with his ideas, thoughts, inventions. Anne Frank kept a diary that changed the world. 

While I can speak for no one but myself, I think those who have kept journals are close friends with our journals, perhaps without even realizing it.

I call it a journal, not a diary. For me, diary implies that a record is kept of daily activities. A journal is a place I can go and set words down about anything I want and do so, uninhibited, safe in the sanctuary of the landscape of me, paper and writing tool: pen, pencil, typewriter, keyboard. I always feel closer to the language when I write in longhand. 

There are not enough places in life where folks can go ahead and be who they are openly without having to gauge the repercussions of doing so. Not so when you write in a journal.

Here’s a couple of techniques I use, at times. Sometimes I’ll write about myself in the third person. When I do that, different phrasing and new clarities emerge. Sometimes, I’ll write to someone. Each entry to someone. Usually, my dad who left this life when he was 55, and I was 15.

And then, there is this. With a journal, I’m never alone.