In All Uncertain Terms

I’ve tried and failed many times to keep a journal. I like the idea of keeping record of my life, of having a reference to look back on to see what my past was like from my own real-time perspective, which will have long faded from my memory. I’ve just never been able to stick with it.

Perhaps the most successful attempt was when I kept a bullet journal for roughly eight months. I don’t think I ever fully grasped the concept, though, and the thing that made it appealing was the myriad of beautiful images of bullet journals to be found on Pinterest. I was drawn to the aesthetics of the practice, not the methodology or purpose. I guess it’s effective marketing, though. Advertisements always sell you on a lifestyle, rather than the actual product. It seemed that all the girls I saw using bullet journals were organized, disciplined, ambitious, beautiful–all the things I’ve always wanted to be and have felt I am not. So I bought into the lie that I would become them, if only I wrote and drew my life on some special paper with colorful markers.

I always enjoyed the drawing and coloring part of it more than the actual journaling, and by the end of August, when my stamina for the thing had fizzled out, it had become a chore, not a hobby.

I think the reason journals and I have never been able to stay companions is that they are for me and no one else. I like the idea of putting all my deepest, darkest secrets down on paper, to have a history of Me, but when I am writing to none but myself, I have to grit my teeth and yank as hard as possible to tack any words to the page. The ones that come out are always bland, noncommittal, vague. My inner world is more colorful than, “I had eggs for breakfast, folded laundry and watched television, and went to the grocery store. I felt melancholy,” but that seems to be the only picture I can paint for myself.

When I write letters, though, the ideas flow so much more easily. The knowledge that someone else will see the sentence seems to make the structure fall into place. The work becomes more than just a selfish historical record, but a generous sharing of myself with someone else, someone important, even if I may not know who that someone is.

It is in part why I started this blog. I feel that my thoughts are most clear and compelling when fit into the framework of written word, but I simply cannot get them to work when I don’t give them away. Writing to an audience of two, maybe a half dozen on a good day, while it might seem silly, is cathartic and fulfilling.

I’ve heard many people say that it’s important to make art for yourself, not others. I understand what they’re getting at. If you make the things you make purely for what others want and what will be the most palatable, marketable, you’ll begin to make things that stop having any impact at all, and lose the joy of creating in the process.

After hearing so many people put forth this idea, I began to wonder if there was something wrong with my creative drive, since I never wanted to make anything just for me.

We were visited by some LDS missionaries several weeks ago. Our conversation with them flitted between various topics, but one that my husband brought up again recently is what he calls the “perseverance of work.” We were both first exposed to the idea through Tim Mackie, in an episode of his podcast, Exploring My Strange Bible, called “A Future for my Work.” It’s part of a sermon series he and other pastors at his church preached about work.

I listened to the sermon in the spring of 2023, and it was incredibly timely. I was the sole earner for our house, working at a job that was physically demanding, had long hours, underpaid me, and had a very toxic environment. I was discouraged, and more importantly, felt that the work I was doing was meaningless. I had worked hard and been underpaid in the past, but I had always known that what I was doing mattered. Caring for children, caring for the disabled, teaching, tending to plants for a scientific institution–these were all honorable, even if not glorious, tasks. Now, however, I was making custom cabinets for rich people who had more dollars than sense, who thought a twelve-bedroom, six-bathroom house with fourteen-feet ceilings was reasonable for a family of four. I was mass producing plain white vanities to go into cheap “luxury” apartments, where landlords would exploit those in need of housing to further fill their pockets, and I was being exploited in the process. How was that meaningful or fulfilling?

In his sermon, Mackie argues that the biblical teaching is that all labor, even the most mundane, if done for Christ, is honorable and lasting. Somehow, he says, that work will be made new in the new creation, and will linger beyond this present life. He acknowledges that this is a mystery, and he has no idea how it works. Somehow, those hundreds of cabinets I worked on, because I did so in service of Christ, will be remade in the new creation, even if they don’t survive this one.

That mystery kept me going through the remainder of the time I spent working there, and I was fortunate to then be able to move on to a job that was more overtly good. I decided to listen to the podcast episode again, and this time was struck by a different part.

Near the beginning of the sermon, Mackie argues that the work of both God and humanity is inherently for others. God made the world for living beings. His crafting of humanity was done with the whole Trinity in mind (“Let us make man in our image”), and he deemed it not good for man to be alone, so he made woman. Nothing is done in isolation.

This important facet of the Genesis story gave me no small comfort, and the principle being pointed out rings true for my own life. I wouldn’t bake, experimenting with new recipes for cakes, cookies, pastries, if I had no one with whom to share the goods. If I cooked only to keep myself from starving, I wouldn’t spend nearly as much time and effort trying to make food that is both nutritious and delicious, incorporating variety and interesting flavors. I wouldn’t care so much to make my house beautiful if I never had guests to welcome, and I wouldn’t paint if there were no eyes to see.

I realized that maybe my difficulty in journaling is not so much a bug of my nervous system, but a feature indicative of the image of God. That’s not to say that those who journal are in any way wrong, but perhaps my inability to do so is simply a sign that I’m meant to write for others.

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The podcast episode referenced: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6J8C6YztezluLngtsa3UJk?si=DI83PuOmRr-CcKZfs8insQ