How Do You Document A Life?
In defense of description
I am 14. I have a notebook devoted entirely to poetry and lyrics I never set to music. Pages and pages I fill. I have yet to attend a writer’s workshop. I have yet to read aloud an unedited piece to a room full of critics who shear it down to its base elements. I don’t know to cringe at my use of warfare as an analogy for heartbreak, or how often I write the word “soul” without an ounce of self-consciousness. I’m happy I’m writing anything. I have an outlet, a way to record my experiences.
I am 16. I journal every couple of days, if not daily. Entries without context are rare. Mostly, I write about what happens. I write down what So-and-So said, word for word, because I’ve never heard it put like that before. I write about looks I’m given because I’m learning what they mean. The song that’s playing at the time cannot be forgotten and so it, too, gets written down. I write about the movies I see by taking down the quotes I like. I talk about the people I spent time with. I describe a concert from start to finish in excruciating detail—the conversations around me, the setlist, live variations on certain songs, what everyone looked like, how it felt to be there.
My mind is an creature crafted for observation, my body nervy and attuned to anything that might hold a deeper meaning. This is my first and last time being 16. This is my first time being alive. Everything is at its beginning. Even when it is bad, it is still new.
I am 20 and in college. I itemize my loan disbursements. I write poetry, but it’s for class, so it’s made incomprehensible by its corrections. I am consumed by all that I must complete. I wager bets on the future. I question and I question and I question.
I am 24. One notebook could span 3-4 years of time with how little I frequent this space. My journal is a book of to-dos, riddled with lists of what I ate that day, mailing addresses, budgets, brief glimpses of time. I worry. I wonder if I’ve become complacent. Affirmations are sprinkled throughout—I tell myself what to feel and how I want things to happen. How can I get better? How can life be better? Job-hunting. Interview preparation. I am so busy. I can do this. I can do this. I am hungry but I want to be present. I cannot remember how. And it goes on and on this way.
But journaling is map-making. I have already illuminated my way back to the beginning.
How do you document your life? Its years, its days, its hours? Journaling—as in, procedurally taking a pen to paper—doesn’t appeal to everyone, yet there are so many ways to do it and no one way to do it right (though, obviously here I am advocating for description, yes). A calendar can be a journal. A camera roll. Receipts. Text threads. Voice notes. Of course, the Notes app.
Here are some questions for consideration about journaling:
When you reflect on a moment in time, what are you paying attention to?
What kind of rules or inhibitions come up for you around writing your life?
What vehicle do you use to document what it is that you are experiencing?
Are you describing or analyzing? Does it make a difference?
What could this do for future-you? What could this do for the future?
If journaling feels trivial, it is not trivial. Even when nothing matters, everything matters. Consider what we know of history because of diarists. Consider what we know about suffering, survival and humanity because of diarists. Understanding yourself can help you understand others. Knowing who you are means knowing what you stand for.
Catalysts
✸ Moon Lists Substack
✸ Journal As Altar Substack
✸ Wilde House Paper
✸ Archer & Olive
✸ Listening to the Perfume Genius track, “Describe”
"One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, ‘What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?’”
―Rachel Carson
“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
―Mary Oliver
“I perceive value, I confer value, I create value, I even create — or guarantee — existence. Hence, my compulsion to make “lists.” The things (Beethoven’s music, movies, business firms) won’t exist unless I signify my interest in them by at least noting down their names.
Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my interest, or my potential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province.”
―Susan Sontag
"I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it's thrilling. We're all enlivened by it. We don't have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water."
— Marie Howe