New England Literature Program<\/a> (known on the streets of Ann Arbor as simply NELP) was to put my own blood in my journal \u2014 and no, this isn\u2019t a metaphor for anything. During this nine-credit English program, in which you replace all technology for six and a half weeks with a personal journal (the only coursework you complete during this time), you are encouraged to add anything and everything to what is dubbed your \u201cproject\u201d while you\u2019re there: words and otherwise. Blood is certainly an extreme example, but it\u2019s far from the weirdest thing to find its way into a journal \u2014 students have been known to add anything from leaves and feathers (fine) to dirt and sweat (getting weirder) to ticks and clippings of their friends\u2019 hair (ah NELP, how I miss you) in pursuit of this mission.<\/p>\nWhen I arrived in New Hampshire, even the thought of adding any of these things to my journal was enough to shake me \u2014 to be so freeform felt antithetical to the idea I\u2019d built in my head of what journaling was meant to be and look like. In the first few weeks, the closest I got to this was hesitantly taping a piece of moss about the size of the nail on my pinky finger into a page. Later, I made a simple collage: a scrap of bark, a leaf from our first hike and a blue jay\u2019s feather I found on the ground \u2014 not exactly what I\u2019d call a running start.<\/p>\n
For someone so obsessed with collecting all her life, you\u2019d think this would have been easy for me, not to mention obvious \u2014 my two loves, writing and trash, brought together in holy matrimony! It should have been a match made in heaven, this new (albeit sometimes gross) kind of journaling. Except, as it turns out, perfectionism is a hard third wheel to cut out of the equation. The more I tried to push myself to try new things, to be experimental, to go outside my comfort zone, the more I felt it \u2014 the pushing<\/em>. If breaking the rules was supposed to feel freeing, why did I suddenly feel so confined?<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\nThe answer, I found, was rooted in the same problem I\u2019ve struggled with all my life: I cared too much.<\/p>\n
Like with those objects, touched and abandoned in stores as a child; those scraps of paper I couldn\u2019t let go of; those half-filled journals with their oh-so-many rules and detailed retellings of passing moments that might have otherwise been forgotten, I couldn\u2019t let go of the idea of what my NELP experience and journal should look like.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t say what was so different about the realization this time, except maybe the fact it coincided with a time in my life where I simply didn\u2019t have the time or energy to hold on to everything in the same way I had gotten used to doing (what can I say \u2014 NELP is great, but it isn\u2019t easy). Whatever the case, though, this time I could feel something giving \u2014 a brick sliding loose, a key turning in a lock, a door, long-shut, opening at last. I finally felt, when it came to journaling at least, a sense of real freedom. There was no opportunity to quit this time and wait for inspiration to strike again later \u2014 I had to find a way forward now. And that way forward, as it turned out, was letting go.<\/p>\n
Frantic recounts of my days turned to simple, bulleted lists. I began adding drawings and other stylistic experiments to my pages. While the number of objects I had access to in the woods remained slim, I felt less anxiety about adding those objects to my journal when I found them. The rules, once so integral to the way I conceived of journaling, seemed to have dissolved before my very eyes. Now, the only voice I answered to when it came to deciding what went in my journal, and how, was my own.<\/p>\n\nAbout a month after I returned from New England, I began a new journal. In it, one of the very first things I wrote was a reminder to myself that, as I\u2019d finally realized at NELP, \u201cthis journal is an im<\/em>perfect work of art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\nToday, this reminder remains at the heart of everything I put in my journal. More than just a warning about the dangers of perfectionism, though, it has also repeatedly served as a reminder to me that no chronicling of a life is ever perfect. While journaling and collecting may act as aides to our memory, they are ultimately only that; to expect them to perfectly preserve a life as it is now would be a mistake, one that can only end in disappointment.<\/p>\n
For years, I was terrified of change and of forgetting myself in the passing of time. Journaling and collecting were my attempt at escaping that fear, but, in doing so, I unintentionally spent most of my life dreading a future that hadn\u2019t yet come, mourning a past that had long since gone and forgetting that I was living in a present that was quickly passing me by. I can\u2019t say that NELP helped me get over those fears entirely, but this new kind of journaling \u2014 junk journaling, we\u2019ll call it \u2014 has helped me see a different path. Now, even if I don\u2019t capture every little moment as it happens, I know I can always take comfort in the knowledge that a small piece of that time (in the shape of a leaf, a napkin, a rewards card) can make its way into my journal and, in doing so, preserve a small piece of who I was the day that I found it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I love my journal today more than I have ever loved a journal before it, and that\u2019s partially because you can see<\/em> it, that outpouring of love and memory, before you even open it. The spine widens, the pages spread and the book is so obviously full of life that it bends, opens, tells a story without showing us a single page. Where with my old journals I was obsessed with the idea of keeping them \u201cperfect\u201d and \u201clike-new\u201d for as long as possible, I can look at my journal today and see that it is used, loved, full of the time and memory I now know, without a single doubt, it holds. The clinical perfectionism is gone, replaced by something with a pulse.\u00a0<\/p>\nSo if you\u2019re looking for a new summer hobby \u2014 and let\u2019s be honest, who isn\u2019t? \u2014 consider pulling out an old journal and giving memory-keeping a try. What better time to memorialize in writing than these few special months? But, before you begin, consider the kind of story you want to tell your future self and what kind of journaling might best suit your needs. Because who knows? Perhaps this is the summer you start filling your journal with trash, too.<\/p>\n
Statement Contributor Camille Nagy can be reached at <\/em>camnagy@umich.edu<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\n\n\t\t<\/aside>\n
Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For as long as I can remember, I\u2019ve been told that I hold on to way too much.\u00a0 Emotions, memories, grudges \u2014 and yes, garbage. Or at least, things that most people would consider garbage. From receipts to old ticket stubs, vintage photographs of strangers to losing scratch-offs, my childhood bedroom was always overflowing with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1870,1872,1871,1002],"class_list":{"0":"post-1663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-fell","9":"tag-journaling","10":"tag-junk","11":"tag-love"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1665,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663\/revisions\/1665"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}