When I was younger, I started a diary. I wrote earnest, angst-filled, teenager-y screeds about boys and concerts and school. As I got older, I wrote in the journal about work, and moving, and trips, and family. I was never a regular, every-day writer, but especially on trips (something about that airport air), I tended to write. Nothing earth-shattering, but feelings I wanted to get out, or details I wanted to remember.
Over the years, I've written in my journal less and less, and in the past four years, less still, because I tend to write things out here: what I'm thinking and feeling and doing, what the weather's like, the funny things I see. I still pick up the journal once in a while, if for some reason there's something I don't want to write about here, but that's rare, and generally I now blog instead of journaling. And somehow I have reached blog post number one thousand.
1000.
That's a big, round number, isn't it? In almost four years, that's about two of every three days (if my math is correct, which honestly is unlikely).
For that matter, four years in August! Seriously? I find that harder to believe than 1000 posts. I thought it was three, but I checked, and it was 2006 when I started. Freaky, man.
So in honor of the thousandth post, I want to ask you a question, and there may be prizes! (Do you like how I don't commit myself? Yarn, chocolate, who knows.)
The question is this: Do you blog? Keep a journal or diary? Vent to a husband, wife, or best friend? How do you vent anger, share frustration, remember details, get yourself off that ledge, share joys and laughs: directly to a person, or via a page (paper or electronic)? Some of the above, all of the above, none of the above? Are you a ball of seething emotions waiting for a valve? Do you let it out at the person behind you in line at the grocery store? What's your method, and how well does it work for you?
Answer this week, and we'll see what happens next weekend...
I mostly knit, sometimes crochet or cross-stitch. I read, a lot. I love cats. I love hockey, especially my no-longer-local team, the Boston Bruins. Want more? Read on.
All of the above is my answer, depending on the situation. In a group of strangers I will comment at large about an oddity we all are experiencing (seeing a VERY LARGE snake wrapped around its owner -I hope- at the local PetCo comes to mind). Actually, I think I may have shrieked.
ReplyDeleteI vent on paper to organize my thoughts and look hard at the answer I don't like. My earlier written journal entries are still kept as (bad) examples in lessons where humility would have been a better choice.
I write on Facebook and on my blog to tether memories to places in time. I have a loose grasp of the space-time continuum at the best of times.
I vent to my husband regarding work frustrations and sometimes he even remembers that it is *just* venting, not a cry for help or for someone to "fix" it for me.
Congratulations on your first millennium!
All right, 1000!!!
ReplyDeleteVenting, huh? I have turned to a journal, on and off, since my teens, for one thing. I try not to rant too much on my blog, but stuff happens and it makes for a good discussion most of the time.
I do vent to the cat on occasion--she ought to lend a fuzzy ear in light of the fact that I do the feeding, cleaning, and lap-providing.
Sadly, though, I frequently just fail to vent. It turns in. Not good.
I never really thought about this. I don't tend to keep things inside so I must work them out in some fashion.
ReplyDeleteI don't keep a journal. Never been much of one for writing things down. Even now my blog is updated sporadically at best. My daughter, on the other hand, has kept a journal since early grade school and she's 22 now.
Sometimes I'll just have a conversation with myself (not in public thank gawd - look at the crazy woman talking to herself!) or vent with my husband. Like Kate P said, sometimes he even remembers he doesn't have to come up with a solution or fix things for me. When he doesn't remember I *will* remind him ;)
I'm really impressed with you being disciplined enough to come out with 1K on your blog in just 4 years! Go you :D
I DID blog regularly once upon a time. Then I blogged occasionally and now, it seems, not at all. I chalk it up to depression - over unemployment and over the state of the world. My mother always used tot ell me "If you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all!" so I guess that's what I'm doing.
ReplyDeleteInsofar as venting? I have a couple of friends to whom I vent, but I try to not bother them too much, so normally just get over myself and get on with life.
I occasionally write in a journal but not as often as I did in my 20s when I wrote most days.
ReplyDeleteI process some of my thoughts and feelings as I write for work, even though almost none of those emotions actually come out in my work - it's more that the process of writing itself can be therapeutic.
I find a combination of having good friends and my mother to talk/vent to and doing things like yoga and taking long walks help me to process my ups and downs.