What happened within the decade of my journaling gap?
Yes, it's a weird intro. I couldn't think of a simpler one at the moment. Or maybe I should call this entry "My Journaling Gap" instead to make it more ambiguous. And possibly even make it sound... mysterious? Okay, that's a weird way to put it.
For those who are new to this page, welcome. Hi, my name is Florence Joyce. That's my full given name, in case you're curious. Or maybe not. You may probably find it strange that I wrote my entry this way as if I'm talking to a bunch of strangers outside. Or it could even look like as if I was talking in front of a camera. You know, like in a vlog. Though I like the idea a lot, I was never the person who liked doing either of them. An INFP-T here, by the way. The letter "I" gives you the idea of what is my personality already.
Going back to the original topic, what do I mean by saying (or writing) "journaling gap"? I was talking about the years that I stopped journaling during my school days. College days and beyond that, in particular. And if you'd read the first question that introduced this entry, then you'll have an idea of how long I had that gap.
A decade worth of unwritten memories, regardless of their value to me at the time. I haven't journaled for that long. And that's crazy, wherever I put it, because I was a girl (now a woman) who always loved writing ever since joining a newspaper writing seminar when I was in 5th grade. But I didn't go into a full-blown writing enthusiast until I reached second year of high school.
By the way, at the time (as I'd usually explain it), Philippines' educational curriculum didn't have a middle school/junior high and senior high. It was just called... high school. And you only have to go through 4 years of high school before you reach college. That was it.
At least, that was back then. Nearly a decade had passed since the educational curriculum here had changed. I was in 3rd year college when the change started. And that was my 4th year in college, by the way. I stopped for two separate semesters due to financial reasons, so I got held back for a year. Of course, that's how I calculated it. So those college years were a part of that journaling gap.
Looking back at it now, I guess that particular decade which remained unrecorded in pen and paper held some of the crucial memories that changed a lot about my perception in life. They held reasons as to why I just... gave up on how I wanted my life to be so that I could support my family. But now... I'm just a 31-year-old unemployed woman who remained clinging to that one thing that kept me sane all this time -- at least most of the time.
And that's writing.
You know, maybe I should make this a mini-blog series. "Journaling Gap" series, as I'd initially call it. Not sure if I'd be able to stick with it. But let's say that this is the start of it. An introduction of some sort to this series.
(Gosh! It's really hard to focus on writing when you only have a candle as your source of light. But since there's a power outage because of the storm, I'll just have to deal with it for now.)
The main reason why I started to do this entry is to write down as many memories or events as I can recall within that decade of journaling gap. I wanted to write them down on my actual journal, to be honest. But for some reason,I kept on forgetting to do it. Or I'd put it off for the next day. Until I'd forget them again and again. So for me to do it here, it's just giving me a reason to finally put it all to writing and for me to have a reason to update this page consistently. I've been neglecting this page for a long while now and while I do feel apologetic for that, I can't give a viable reason why I didn't post anything here in a long while. Since this page is mainly dedicated for my journaling woes, milestones, and anything that I want to journal about here instead of putting them in my usual journal, let's make this entry the start of it.
By the way, just to give you an idea on how exactly long my journaling gap is, it's about 10 YEARS, 2 MONTHS, and 6 DAYS and I last wrote a journal entry back in April of 2009. I think it was when I graduated in high school. I went back to journaling a day after the Philippine Independence day in 2019 (June 13). So let's see what I could recall for each year that I'd consider as highlights of each. Don't keep your hopes up, though, because there could be instances that I won't recall something for a certain year. If I'm going to be honest, I don't trust my mind to recall things that happened so far back already.
But who knows? Maybe something could act as a trigger for me to recall certain things. By the way, should I do it like write an entry/memory for each year regardless of the length? Maybe I'd be able to find pictures of that year, if I can.
For now, this is how I'd like to introduce this blog series that I ended up thinking as the electricity here in our area while the Tropical Storm Betty (international name: Mawar) is raging on kept on fluctuating. If you managed to reach this far, thank you for reading. Give this page some love and I'll see you in the next entry. 😄💕
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