Thursday, September 6, 2007

Love those comments

Let’s face it; there’s nothing more pleasing to all who journal than the sight of "comment added alert" in our email boxes. It means someone, somewhere out there is actually reading our deathless lines and knowing this, validates such.

Therefore, after an eight-month absence from my journal, I was amazed to view several comments that appeared shortly after my "return" entry. With the exception of one, all were from people I’d never heard from before. Currently, I’m in the process of visiting their journals. It’s been my habit that when I visit someone’s journal initially, I start with their first entry and either read the entire journal or skim through if it’s especially long and end with the most recent entry. How else to get to know someone and get a feel for their style of writing?

I’m hopeful that others do this as well because I have a strong feeling that many of the best entries to flow from my fingers to the printed page are already in place. If no one ever backtracked to peruse past entries, a new reader to my journal would never get a true sense of who I am. These are selfish thoughts, I know, but our journals are our selfish little creations extolling the joys and sorrows of our personal lives and we love them and feel quite proud and protective of them. Come on, you know it’s true.

A lot of people take breaks from their journals; an amazing amount of people keep up with them on such a regular basis that I sometimes wonder if they ever sleep. How do they find the time? When I read back on my journal, I am amazed by how much I wrote and how I found the time to do so. Where did that time go? I swear, the minutes and hours of the days are shrinking and the days and weeks rush by with such speed and, of course, I know why this is happening. It’s because I’m getting older. It’s that simple. My parents told me this would happen and by golly, they were right!

It’s good to be back.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I do the same thing.  Sometimes it takes me a while, but when I am introduced to a journal that is new to me I like to at least read the very first few entries.  I agree that I have had some entries in the past that I am more pleased with than newer ones.  Sometimes I re-enter some of my favorite entries (for the edification of those new to my journal, you know), and hope no one minds that I'm blowing my own horn!
Lori