journaling

Wish I'd kept all of mine, but got rid of some of them during a cleaning frenzy. I'm sorry that I did that and can only tell you not to destroy those journals, as you've got a virtual treasure trove there. Instead, I would go through those journals and mine their entries for story, article and book ideas. Btw, my website, profitable-pen.com is devoted to mining ideas from journals.

I've been journaling for 30 some years now, and I still have every journal I've ever written in. I wouldn't even think about burning them or throwing them away. For me, they mark passage of time, goals I've reached and my growth and development and evolvement from some pretty bad or unhealthy places. I might burn them someday, but not now. I intend to use them as reference materials for my memoirs. If you do decide to burn or through out your journals, make it a meaningful experience, such as burning the past and letting the past float away with the ashes, releasing the past. It's up to you, but I think that would be what I would do.

i love to write. i write in my journal every so often. i used to everyday but then i kind of got away from it. i write in it sometimes. i would also like to keep them and look back in 10 years to see what has changed and how it is still the same. i have ripped one of mine up from a long time ago, but it reminded me of a very bad time in my life and i just had to let it go. i would probably keep the ones i have now for a while. i don't know if i'd burn it or not. we'll see when the time comes i guess. it just depends on how important the journals are to me.

I also write on my journal everynight, sometimes when i have nothing to write on a particular page i will just put a smiley or sad face there, :) i wrote my first journal when i was 1st year highschool and up to now im still keeping it to my drawer, you should never burn your old stuff, because there will come a time when you will need to think back the memories of yesterday which only you and your journal had shared. :)

I think half the joy of journaling is that what you've written becomes a bit of a time capsule. You can go back any time you want and read what what you were doing and thinking at a particular period in your life. I love reading the journals I kept as a teen and young 20-something, and then thinking about how I would do things differently now or how much my goals and dreams have changed or stayed the same. I would never burn an old journal, even if what I wrote in it at the time had me now going "what was I thinking!"

I journal now but never did consistantly for years. What I did and have done is would write letters. I wrote letters to people with no intent of ever sending them just ways to share, vent, or confess. The funny thing is I have come across several notebooks containing these letters and it's fun to read them because I can remember what was going on in my life during those times - the strange thing is how my handwriting has changed over the years, I came across one a while back and didn't recongnize the writing and until I started reading it thought it must be one of my childrens.

I think you'll be filled with a deep regret if you burn your journals. I threw all my journals away from age eleven to age eighteen - it was a huge box full because I wrote FREQUENTLY. It stifled my writing so much that I didn't start keeping a journal again until I was 22. I'm 32 now and still, to this day, I deeply regret throwing all those journals away. I find myself wishing all the time that they'd appear on my doorstep out of the blue. I've kept all my journals from age 22 until now and I know I won't throw this collection away. If you feel really strongly about not having them, consider packing them away in a place where you'll forget about them for awhile. Then, in a few years or so, you can revisit them and see how you feel.

Think of it this way - what if your great, great grandmother had a written in journals and you found out that she burned them? Wouldn't you wish you had had a chance to read them?