💾 Archived View for tilde.team › ~mathpunk › journal › journalingandgrief.gmi captured on 2023-11-14 at 08:41:33. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Journaling is a practice that has been recommended to me many, many times over the course of my life, for multiple different reasons, and I've honestly never taken to it. The two main problems are that I don't really care to write for myself, and everyone presents it to me as a chore to be undertaken begrudgingly. Looking back at my sparse teenage attempts to journal, it's obvious that I'm writing for an audience - one which doesn't exist, so I get disheartened and quit writing. I don't exactly want a lot of people to read my personal thoughts, I just like the idea that someone out there could read it. I need some kind of connection to other humans, I guess. A public gemlog journal works, because I can easily send it to my friends (who I have badgered into installing a gemini browser), and theoretically, other people who find my capsule can read it.
The other problem I had with journaling is that it's presented as a chore with rules: you MUST write about how you feel, you MUST write every day, etc etc. Sometimes I don't feel like talking about my feelings, or I don't even really know what I'm feeling. I definitely will not write every day. The second I set down a list of rules about something, it stops being fun or cathartic and starts being a chore. When I have bad days, one of the first things I do is stop doing the less critical chores in my life. Then I feel like I've failed to journal "correctly," and I stop altogether.
When I was younger, I did what predatory social media sites want you to do: I overshared. It was impossible to avoid, given that I really did want human people to know how I was feeling and what was going on in my life, and at that point in time I was quite lonely. These are two ends of an extreme: writing about how I feel in a place no one will see it, and sharing way too much in a massively populated public setting. What I'm hoping to accomplish with this journal is a reasonable middle ground that will actually be good for me: writing about my life, feelings, thoughts, or whatever strikes me in a public place, but keeping private the details that I think should remain private. Ideally, the lack of rules around what to write or when to write will ensure I don't get discouraged, though I may go for long periods without writing anything.
My grandfather died a little over a month ago, on my birthday. Even now, the fact that he died on my birthday is almost comical. It feels like something out of a TV drama. Truth be told, I don't think I'm any more upset than I would be if he had died on any other day. My family and friends were more awkward about it than I was, though I truthfully struggled with what to say, or how to tell people. I put on a brave face when my grandmother died, and that fucked me up for almost a decade, so I was determined not to do the same this time. Which meant I had to respond to "happy birthday!" with "thanks. My grandpa died."
My neighbor went on a weeklong trip, and left her dog, Sami, with us. We were happy to look after her. I was happy to look after her. I've become quite attached to Sami, and she's currently one of the only things holding me together. My neighbor got back from her trip yesterday and took Sami home, and I'm very sad about that. Of course, I can go visit her whenever I like, but the contrast between how I felt when Sami was here and how I feel now has put into perspective how much of a wreck I really am right now.
I'm really just not even remotely okay. Even a month later, I'm just not okay. I don't know when or if I will be.