Things I Don't Blog About

This blog is primarily a journal keeping tactic for me. I have always been awful about keeping journals. I just can't think of anything interesting to write about. That must mean that my life is very boring! Anyway, it all started with the first journal that my mom bought me, where I wrote some of the most inane things ever to cross a human's mind. When you get older you think you remember what it was like to be a kid and how you felt about things. Well based on my journal that is a total delusion. It is enough sometimes to make me wonder if that was really me. I kept a journal very sporadically throughout my youth, (i.e., hardly at all) so there is not much for me to look back over and remember about myself. And I have come to the following conclusion:
I am glad I didn't write much down.

I read it all now and my primary thoughts are either about what a brat I was or how embarrassed I am because obviously I have always been a total moron. This always makes me feel like I must still be a total moron, because it is still me, right? Some examples:

• I wrote detailed explanations of daily events when I was little, including all of my siblings bodily functions.
• I wrote about the bugs that I found in the garden and in the window wells. There is even a picture of one insect that I attempted to draw, although I am not sure anyone living could identify it as such.
• I wrote quite a lot about boys. I accept that this is normal, but what a waste of a lot of time, paper and ink. Now there were some very nice boys, don't get me wrong. But there were a lot who simply weren't.
• I wrote about how much my mom hated me, and how much I hated my older sister. (whom I do not hate one bit, actually)
• I wrote a lot about singing--singing with friends, with school groups, with church groups, problems with singing...hm, could I have been a bigger nerd?

There was only one time where I kept a journal reliably, and that was while I was a missionary for my church in France. I was 21 and pretty clueless about things, I have to say. I met a lot of very different people and I wrote about my reactions to them and about living in a place so extremely different from the one I where I grew up. I also had some angry journal entries. I don't get angry very often, but I got pretty angry in those journal pages and it makes me sad to think about it now. I got angry over stupid things.

None of this inspires me to be a better journal keeper; in fact, I never want ANYONE reading what I wrote in those journals. But since blogging has been as close as I have come, I am trying to keep it up. But some things are off limits.

• Bodily functions-nobody needs to know, and I don't want to remember. I departed from this one a couple of months ago with my sister's foot injury. What can I say, the morbid fascination was too much for me. Sorry.
• Complicated family relationships. They are private and no one needs to know about it but me and them.
• Our childless state. Trust me, it gets talked about all the time, I certainly don't want to write about it.
• Anger. Anger just does not work for me, and it's never worth the embarrassment you feel when you go back and read what you wrote when you were angry. (Although anger does get teenagers to move their backpacks out of the walkway very quickly.)
• My body shape and size. I am what I am. Nobody needs to hear about it; not even I want to hear about it most of the time.
• Work frustrations. Everyone has work frustrations. But they are almost always temporary and it's better to remember that you yourself may be someone's work frustration, so don't write about it for anyone else to read about. Would you want to be written about that way? Besides, it's hard for me to be happy if I am knowingly causing discomfort to someone else. (The exception being giving homework and tests. Discomfort? Yes. Cruelty? No.)

Some people have argued with me that it's good to see where you came from so that you can measure your growth. Maybe one day I will be able to look at it like that. That's probably a much healthier angle. So maybe. But not yet!