When you look back, what desire crops up over and over again?

what I learned scanning old journals that surprised me

We’re on a cleaning jag around our house, and what better way to spend a sub-zero long weekend than tackling the basement? (That was a joke: there are a LOT better ways to spend a long weekend like watching movies, napping, reading, and eating hot buttered toast what a sprinkling of parmesan.)

The first layer of papers and old stuff was a breeze to toss - nobody needs business receipts from 2012. None of our kids wants the lamp I’ve held on to for 28 years. Or the old vacuum.

The second layer gave us pause - do we keep our divorce papers? Do I keep my wedding vows from my first marriage? Do I need to keep my Mom’s and Dad’s extra death certificates?

Slowly the recycling bin in the garage filled. We were ruthless. It felt like years were lifting off my shoulders.

And finally, it was just me alone facing two banker boxes of my old journals. Decades of personal writing and plans, notes from classes, and books I’ve written. What to do with them? Read them? Keep them all? Keep some?

my first journal - I kept this one

I’ve culled my journals before. We moved to this house 8+ years ago and we threw out and gave away so much - moving 1200 miles will do that to you. I don’t remember how I chose what journals to keep and which to throw away but I do remember I pulled the journals I was done with apart so I could recycle them. I put them in the big green bin and pulled it to the curb.

A few hours later I looked out the window to see the wind had picked up, the lid had blown open on the bin, and my journal pages were all over our street, on my neighbor’s lawn, under their cars.

You’ve never seen somebody move so fast. My neighbors came out to help me when they saw me on my hands and knees under their truck and I tweaked my back, I gestured at them so hard to go back inside. “I’ve got this!” I chirped, face brick red. Please god, I prayed, go back inside. I do not want you to read any bit of this.

Fast forward a decade, and here I perched in my cold basement, scanning through the boxes of remaining journals. It took about ten minutes to be exhausted by reading my berating efforts to change and be someone other than I was — I need to eat better, I need to exercise more, I need to write more, I need to be more thoughtful… but then something else took shape on those pages.

As I scanned SO MANY JOURNALS OVER SO MANY DECADES I saw how often I wrote in those battered notebooks different ideas for novels, how much I wrote about my characters, thought about them, tried to figure out what they would do next, how many pages were filled with ideas and bits of stories and dialogue.

And how often I wrote something along the lines of “This time will be different, I will make writing fiction a priority.”

I sat there, grimy from cleaning, stunned. I had forgotten how badly and over how many years I had tried to write novels. (And I did write two and half, but never revised them. Don’t ask me why, I got great feedback from writing teachers and my agent. I don’t know.)

How much work I had done.

And how many times I had faltered. Quit. The last time I tried writing fiction? 12 years ago.

I am, in general, one tenacious mofo or I wouldn’t have had the career I’ve had but I can also be a quitter. No, wait, quitter isn’t the right word. I get close to what brings me alive and then I back off. Back and forth, closer, hesitate, pull back. Am I a quiverer?

Why didn't I stick with fiction? Was it as simple as I needed better mentors, teachers, the support of book coaching which works so very well for me? Was it finally discovering a process of writing in which I sketch out the story beforehand and then revise the story elements and deepen the characters as I go, with feedback from my coach? (Which is how I work with clients.) For sure this is making a giant difference. Is it that I got bored with my own fear and waffling? Roger that.

And maybe I got better at wanting. Maybe one of the reasons we say it’s too late or we don’t stick with a desire or we let “an identity wither” as Paula commented on last week’s newsletter is because we can’t bear the wanting, can’t sit with it. We lose our longings underneath fogginess and confusion, excuses and justifications, behind life and all its demands. So understandable and far too costly to continue.

I could have dug a deep cesspool of regret and drowned myself there after reading those decades of trying and not succeeding, of stopping and starting. But instead, I sat up straighter and thought,

“Damn girl you spent a lot of time thinking about writing, learning about writing, working it, you have been devoted. And you are primed to do this now!”

Also, I did write 9 other books during that time. I did support my family. I did help a lot of women. And I won’t discount that.

I dragged those dented old banker boxes, sans a few journals about my kid’s early years, out to the recycling bin, and went back in the warm kitchen without a backward glance.

My work now is to relax, write the rest of this first draft, and embrace my desire without making a big ding dang do out of it. By this I mean I don’t want to weigh my writing down with saving me or making me special or finally fulfilling some vaulted purpose, old very unhelpful stories. Neither do I want to hinge on some future success narrative on selling the book and finally seeing myself as one of the cool literary kids. A desire is yours once you decide it is, not when someone else stamps it with their approval or their publishing contract. A longing enlivens you now as you learn to let it.

Tell me if you’ve ever peered at old journals or other records of your past and found a desire that moved you to take action, to realize it’s not too late, that it’s time to live it now. I love reading your comments so much.

Love,

Jen

P.S. Part of what got me to this point of embracing my desire was writing Why Bother? Discover the Desire for What’s Next. You might find it useful if you need help uncovering what you want or getting past the idea of why bother to start something.