looking back, looking forward>

Tonight i found some old letters and journals from about 6-7 years ago when i tried to take my life. My sister called all my friends at the time and let them know what i had done and asked them to write to me while i was away in treatment. So these are what i was looking through... and it's amazing how nice and loving everyone was. It makes me wonder where everyone is now and what they are up to. I know i wasn't always happy back then but looking back I feel....like.... i want to go back...i can't think of the word, but that's basically how i feel. Anyway it's strange when i think that back then, when i was a teenager, my friends were my family and my family were the people i avoided. Now my family is all i've got and my friends are the people i've been avoiding. Yet at the same time i feel like it's not that i've gotten older and moved on with my life... i feel like i've regressed and my friends have moved on and therefore can no longer relate to the people my age.
I don't know if anyone here has ever kept a copy of coversations through instant messaging with friends but i found a copy of that as well, and it's cool to look back and see the person you were without being able to argue with it. It's a record and records wont lie. At any rate i found it so interesting that i've been wanting to do something of a live journal and record the audio of my interactions with people on a daily basis and see what kind of a person i am. I would like to do video but that's not enirely possible, and i wouldn't feel right if the other person didn't know they were on film.

i relate to some of this...like "friends" used to take me out or catch up with me when they found out i was sick...but now they don't do it anymore i guess it's no loss cos i didn't like them much , and i've always wanted some kind of proof that i existed...it's hard to explain but i'm always glad i have things written in my diary...incase they have the clue to what i'm trying to solve. Cheers

I have been keeping journals since I was 16 -- about 40 years.Sometimes I think about just throwing them away. But I don't, kinda like throwing a part of myself away. They are mostly about nothing, but sometimes I go back bec. I want to remember how I was or life was or someone was.

Now I keep them on a computer. Take up less space, less to lug through life with me.

Ya, it's cool to read through some of the old enties. I remember I started keeping journals in 8th grade as part of a writing requirement. We were all given a little paper back booklet with about 100 pages and intructed to write a couple enties a week as part of our assignments. I started writting and flew through about 4 to 5 books that year. It was amazing i thought and of coarse the teacher was shocked as well.
Unfortionatly i have the bad habit of throwing them out after a couple of years for whatever reason. I wish i hadn't now though. I can't wait to start doing live journals so i'll have to think about what it would take to start that up. Have you ever wanted to keep a journal through voice instead of writting, it sounds intimidating to me and expensive but it might be cool. Plus hey, they've got to have some kind of device that recordes to a memory stick instead of tape right?

Hi -- When I said I now do my journaling on computer, these are not "live blogs." Just for me. Can't imagine anyone else would want to read. Sometimes it winds up being a To Do List or a What I Accomplished List.

I've not thought of keeping the journal on tape. I have wanted to keep notes of countryside and thoughts while driving. Unfortunately, my cassette recorder conked and I didn't know -- and all the tapes of my drive from Florida to Northern California, and also San Fran to Portland and back along the wild coastline, and through moose country, were lost. I've thought of investing in a digital recorder, like executives use, but have been unemployed a long time. And of course, that imposes taking time to transcribe.

Plus, computerized notes are highly searchable!

Some people say that typing is a right-brain linear activity and writing longhand is a creative left brain activity. However, I've been typing for 40 years. I have arthritis and my hands get numb since having an accident that impaired hand nerves. I feel as if I loose too much free flowing thought when I go longhand and that typing is purer for me now.

I also have gone through periods where I make brightly-colored drawings, usually using magic markers. These can be very revealing of inner states when I go back and look at them later.