Are You Keeping a Journal?

A study abroad assumption.

By Marianna Jocas

Illustration by Iris Pope

If I recorded and then overlayed each conversation I’ve had about my time abroad, the resulting stream of chaos would eventually synchronize to ask: “You’re keeping a journal of all this, right?”

On its surface, the question is benign, which is why it may seem odd that it gives me a pang of anxiety. That’s because the question references a larger, more disconcerting notion that good experiences—and maybe our youth in general—should be memorialized. The pressure to make a shrine of my time abroad insinuates that life’s excitement is finite, and that one day, I’ll inevitably crave evidence of my current bliss. 

We’ve been seduced by a myth of future nostalgia. I’ve watched my roommates faithfully journal every night for three months straight—and if they miss a day, they write two entries the next. I haven’t lived long enough to verify or dismiss if any of this is necessary, but it’s a hard gamble to make when adults (famously experienced in being alive) also claim I should be journaling. Regardless, I think rituals of overdocumentation such as these ignite a certain nervosa about how we are participating in our lives. It makes us question whether we are taking every moment as seriously as we should, which is why I’ve allowed my time abroad to remain largely undocumented.

I used to be an avid journaler, which has made adopting this new philosophy feel like getting rid of a pair of training wheels—I no longer rely on my journal to validate my good experiences. As a result, everything is a little lighter, a little more alive. However, this new freedom also comes with a new danger: I could fall. I could forget. Like everybody else, I get worried that special moments may slip from me. But what if that wasn’t so bad after all? Sure, I might forget the exact sensation I had when exiting Club Sixteen, what I was wearing, who I was with, and where I was going, but that moment will never truly die. We tend to think of memories with a sense of loss, but good experiences stay within you—in your body, your perspective–and they contribute to the way you think, the way you dance, how you treat people. Even if you don’t actively remember them, every moment culminates into something that constitutes your whole self. 

Of course, there is beauty in documentation—in journaling and taking pictures and scrapbooking—and I don’t want to suggest that the practice should be discarded altogether. Journaling will always serve as a private refuge during life’s not so picture-esque moments, it will always help with processing and untangling messy thoughts. My critique is less so of the act of journaling itself, but rather of with journaling as a means of creating a shrine of the past. We are brilliant creatures with an articulate mechanism of memory, and we should put more trust in it.

So no, I’m not keeping a journal of all this, and maybe I won’t remember it, but maybe that’s the point. Memory is fleeting, and it crystallizes in its unique ways for a reason. One day, I may taste something that brings me back to my 8:30 a.m. breakfasts in Kathmandu, or catch a whiff of the shampoo I used on cold Curarrehue evenings. These sporadic shots of memory will be sprinkled throughout my life in ways I can’t even begin to predict. For me, that is more than enough.