{"id":279,"date":"2022-05-08T18:06:28","date_gmt":"2022-05-08T18:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monicajwilliams.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/08\/life-of-a-journal\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T22:38:30","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T22:38:30","slug":"life-of-a-journal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monicajwilliams.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/08\/life-of-a-journal\/","title":{"rendered":"Life of a Journal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image\"<\/figure>\n

The handwritten dedication at the start of the journal elicits hope, love, and tenderness. Who is this \u201cfearless and awesome\u201d Alexandra daughter? Did she share her dad\u2019s vision of what\u2019s to come in her life? <\/p>\n

Dad\u2019s vision is clear: she\u2019ll embark on writing adventures with her trusty lime-green notebook at her side. Is the prodigal daughter a child just beginning to show a love for words? She\u2019ll take the journal to the garden and spend hours dreaming up her own adventures. <\/p>\n

Or perhaps she\u2019s an older teenager planning to flee the safety of her parents\u2019 nest. She\u2019ll take the notebook around the world to document and then later share her experiences with her dad, her children, and her children\u2019s children. <\/p>\n

In either case, Dad sees the glorious Alexandra living a life of freedom through writing. She\u2019ll find herself in the blank pages and return to him a changed person. The journal promises to serve her well.<\/p>\n

Feel the anticipation and hope of an entirely blank journal awaiting its future, made even giddier by the promised writing adventures. She\u2019s numbering the pages. She stops at forty. Not a bad start. There will be more. Much more. Its pages will fill. It\u2019ll find purpose. <\/p>\n

And then she writes. Glorious thoughts-turned-words, observations, experiences. The journal becomes daily habit. <\/p>\n

Alas, the hope and dream of our fearless Alexandra quickly and easily filling page after page with the barreling scrawl of a pen that can\u2019t move fast enough dies by the fifteenth page. At first, she writes two pages each day. And then, a week later, she skips a day. One day becomes two, three. Fourteen pages she fills, and then she simply stops. She\u2019s lost interest. Hopes and dreams die as she sets the journal aside.<\/p>\n

Did our Alexandra ever feel fearless and awesome, or was that something other people saw in her that she never did? Dad\u2019s obviously not a writer; he misspelled \u201cwriting\u201d in the dedication. Did Alexandra bristle at that? Perhaps she doesn\u2019t love him. \u201cHe tries too hard,\u201d she thinks. \u201cHe pretends to know me, but he doesn\u2019t know me at all. He wanted to be a writer, not me. I want nothing to do with wordplay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, she tears out the first fourteen pages, leaving ragged edges in the spine and numbers fifteen through forty lost without their starting anchor. She leaves the first page, the one with the words from her dad so thoughtfully inscribed, in the journal.<\/p>\n

The lime-green notebook ends up in a thrift store bin, tossed aside with other journals started and never finished. One, two, maybe three pages of the best intentions, and then their writers turned away from the page, unable to bear the tugging \u201cI should write\u201d thoughts that plagued them every time they saw the pristine bound books on their shelves. The journals became dusty. Instead of choosing one, opening it ever so lovingly, and giving in to the pull of writing magic, these lost writers tossed the journals into \u201cDonate\u201d piles and delivered them to drab second-hand stores to live under sickly green fluorescent lights, calling to shoppers to adopt them.<\/p>\n

Alexandra\u2019s lime-green notebook sits closed tight with an elastic band next to a royal blue \u201cKeep Calm and Write On\u201d journal. With only two pages filled, the Keep Calm journal has fared worse than Alexandra\u2019s notebook. <\/p>\n

The dust gathers, disturbed every couple of days by a mildly interested customer rummaging for a greater treasure. The lime-green notebook would sigh if it could. It\u2019s waiting for exactly the right person to pick it up. To see the note from loving father to potential writer daughter. To feel the possibilities. <\/p>\n

When that person comes, she will notice the careful numbering of pages fifteen through forty. She\u2019ll know that she must take this notebook home to begin a new life as writer and companion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The handwritten dedication at the start of the journal elicits hope, love, and tenderness. Who is this \u201cfearless and awesome\u201d Alexandra daughter? Did she share her dad\u2019s vision of what\u2019s to come in her life? …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[58,39,33],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-flash-fiction","tag-writerslife","tag-wwol"],"yoast_head":"\nLife of a Journal - Monica J. 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Who is this \u201cfearless and awesome\u201d Alexandra daughter? Did she share her dad\u2019s vision of what\u2019s to come in her life? ...","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":301,"url":"https:\/\/monicajwilliams.com\/index.php\/2020\/03\/03\/how-i-matter-part-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":279,"position":0},"title":"How I matter (part 1)","author":"Monica Williams","date":"March 3, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Chapter 1 Fight or flight mode had kicked in again. She, a tall, thin woman with brown hair tied up in a ponytail, ran against the feeling. Or into the feeling. She never could tell which.The trail iced over in spots, forcing her to pick her way slowly through to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fiction"","block_context":{"text":"Fiction","link":"https:\/\/monicajwilliams.com\/index.php\/category\/fiction\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":286,"url":"https:\/\/monicajwilliams.com\/index.php\/2021\/05\/27\/alaska-day-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":279,"position":1},"title":"Alaska, Day 2","author":"Monica Williams","date":"May 27, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"My second full day in Alaska, I set out to explore downtown Fairbanks. It wasn\u2019t anything like I expected. I pictured a little area of shops around the river; I found more of a ghost town. 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