I journal (in cursive, in fountain pen, in a college-lined composition book) every morning. I have been journaling every day since the early 90s, when I was in graduate school. I journaled before then, too, but only intermittently. It’s easier to maintain a daily habit than an occasional one.

At one point, I had a couple of shelves of physical journals in my study, but a few years back I realized it was too hard to leaf through them to find what I wanted, and they were taking up space. I started transcribing the bits I wanted onto Word files, and then tossing the journals themselves. Now, I go through each journal as I fill it up, and transcribe the events I want to remember. I’m a touch typist so it goes fast. 

It has come in awfully handy having my memories in digital form, because if I want to remember when something happened, all I have to do is search the directory for that word (“tattoo,” for instance) or that name (Uncle Brink).

I don’t expect anyone to read them after I’m gone, though I did write a fairly terrible memoir based on my journals a couple years back. I had three hard-bound copies made of the memoir, so I could read it again when I am very old, and know that I did something. I gave a copy of the memoir to my adult kid, and they read some of it and then skipped forward to where my husband was dying and read that part, because that was what they needed to remember. Maybe they’ll read it again some time when they’re trying to come to terms with my death. That would be nice. 

Another thing I often note in my journal is what I remember of my dreams. However, I never, ever transcribe my dreams, because when I go back and flip through my writing, I don’t remember the dreams any more. What I wrote down doesn’t make sense. It didn’t stick. I know the dreams were vivid at the time, and fascinating, I just don’t recognize them as events in my life.

Dreams are slippery. They dissolve at the touch of mid-morning light. But they have a persistent reality at the same time. They have a landscape, with landmarks and connecting highways. At least my dreams do. 

In my dream country, there’s an elevated railway, with girders and shadows. There’s a tiny amusement park, and a promenade along the beach. A train goes along the coast from the shore to the city, and out into the shabby suburbs and worn-out alleyways on the other side. Oh, my childhood house is there, and the house we lived in later, but there are other places as well, places that exist only in my night mind. 

I once drafted an entire novel set in that world. It’s unsalable, but that’s all right. I wanted to lay out the map and figure out where everything was located, and the plot was a secondary excuse.

My dreams are important to me, even when I don’t remember them all that well; my dead mother is often alive in them, and my husband, both preoccupied with their own concerns, and they are both very very busy. That’s reassuring. 

Maybe when I die I will still be there, in my dreams, like my mother and like my husband. I will be very, very busy. There are many things to do in that dream country. I’m thinking perhaps I will keep a journal there, after I have moved in for good.  Whether I will copy out the good bits there and toss out the filled journals, I don’t know.