Journaling

I  have been keeping a journal for 40 years now; I began my first journal on February 13, 1980. That afternoon I walked into Bloomfield with my friend Bill Freyberger, so we could buy Valentine’s cards for our parents. I can’t remember what store we went too, probably a drug store, because I wound up buying a big bag of peanut M&Ms and a red spiral bound notebook, as well as the card for my folks. Later that night, I sat in my cold room (my parents did not believe in paying the gas company hundreds of dollars a month for heat) and I made my first entry. It was about my day, what had happened at school and later at home, and what I thought about it all.

Even then, when I was in High School, I wanted to be a writer. My hope was to write a story that would get me published at an early age. I would sit home and write for hours and hours…making it all up as I went along. I first thought of a journal as a way of recording and remembering my real life experiences, which would feed my fiction; but I never followed through with the idea.

Then we began to study the nature of dreams in one of my High School classes (psych, English?), and interested in learning more I checked out Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams” from the Upsala College Library. After reading through the book (not every word mind you), I started writing down my dreams (including one where the Pope was shot…about a year and a half before it happened); as I wrote down some of my dreams, I began to write more and more of my own thoughts, and about events I experienced during the day, and this lead me to start keeping a real journal (‘diary’ just did not sound right to me).

In the beginning, I was very faithful about updating the journal every day; I wrote about things I did, things that happened to me and around me, and how I felt about it all. At first I used some codes and my own version of shorthand for some entries…those I did not want my mother to read in case she found it and got curious. Being in High School at the time I really did not have much hide…except for some petty vandalism, the occasional pot smoking, the beers I snuck into my room, and the girls I liked, and how I felt sad and frustrated about not being able to get them to like me back.

Then, of course, I also wrote about my struggles with my parents, mostly my mother, as we did not see eye to eye on much, and would get into some intense fights. It was what I wrote after these battles that I really did not want her to read.

Looking back now (and I can because I wrote it all down) it seems pretty lame; even the fights, but these things were very important to me at the time.

And I wanted to have a safe place to express how I was feeling.

By the time I was a freshman in college, the entries had taken a darker tone.  I wrote more about how disappointed I was with life, and how I could not wait to move on from where I was. I was frustrated because nothing seemed to work out for me…other people got to find success with women, money, friends, etc…but I felt like these things were out of reach for me.

Things were not a bleak as I made them out to be, but I did face many challenges, mostly of my own making.  The darkest and strangest entries were written while I was drunk and/or stoned; and looking back now, it is clear that it was my issues with these substances that de-railed my life so badly and kept me in that cycle of failure.

Even through my years of drugs and alcohol, I continued to write in the journal, but that was really the only writing I was doing. I stopped writing my stories, poems, walked away from the beginnings of a promising career in journalism. Instead I would write these long, rambling, and mostly incoherent entries in my journal.

By the time I met my ex-wife, I had graduated from college and was working on Wall Street. I had also fallen out of the habit of writing in the journal every day. Then I found myself too caught up in the relationship and whirl-wind marriage that followed, not to mention my continued drinking and drugging and the turmoil that came along with it, to keep up with my writing.

My journaling picked up a little bit around the time I got sober, as I wrote long essays about coming back to life after a long, cold season of darkness; but then after a few years, I left my job (now in Publishing) and went to Seminary, where I was busy writing all day and journaling became an occasional activity…and then it slowed down even more when my daughter was born, and I was busy taking care of my home and school responsibilities.

The journal remained on the back burner until the next major life change occurred, the disintegration of my marriage, quickly followed by the loss of my older brother and the end of the career that I had been training so hard for…a career that was over before it could even start.

That was when I started writing a lot more, as a form of therapy, a way of working through the pain and grief that I was feeling. I would sometimes write for hours, just getting out the poison and sorrow that was filling up my life, and trying to find my feet during a time when I felt as if I was caught up in the tumbling surf.

Eventually, my life got back on track (more or less) I got a new jobs, involved in new relationships, became more active in my church, and got even busier with my daughter, handling the school, social and growing issues with that come along with raising a child.

Then, when we hit the teen years, and my daughter found herself struggling with some of the same Addiction issues I had, there was even less time journal. Living with an active Addiction can really suck up all the energy in the room.

Today, I still keep a journal next to my bed. It is a hard bound book, given to me by a friend, who was going to use it as her own journal, but did not get far before she died. Now, when I do write in it, I remember the person who gave it to me, as a friend and a fellow person in Recovery, and I am honored that I was given such a gift.

That said, I do not write in it every day, but only when I am moved by events or emotions…or an anniversary of significance. 

It is not that I do not have anything to write about, clearly I have been writing quite a bit these past few years; however, many of the essays that I have posted on-line and have had published in books and magazines would probably have gone into my journal in the past; but by the time my day ends (which was usually when I would write in my journal) I am simply too tired to want to re-write what I had already written.

Joiurnaling helps me to handle that average, every day stresses of life, the ordinary life on life’s terms stuff that are tough to deal with all the same. This kind of writing gives me a place to vent, and to think through my feelings and reactions.

It also gives me the opportunity to look back on the hard days I have survived. To read through the pages of turmoil, frustration and worry, and experiencing the joy that life has moved on, I have survived, and that seasons have changed.

My journal is a living history of my life, a re-telling of the ordinary and every day drama; the story of who I was, who I am, and who I wish to be.  It is not an amazing story, or even a really fascinating one, but it is mine, and the only one that I can really tell…my challenge is to make it interesting enough to read one day, when someone stumbles across the dusty stack of spiral bound notebooks, and decides to open them up and take a look.

Dead-Heading

I didn’t have much of a chance of getting into the concert, but I agreed to give my friends a ride to Philadelphia any way.

It was a chance at a road trip, some free beer and pot, and there was the potential for fun!

It was the summer of 1985(?), and it was a slow weekend, no work, and I had no summer classes at college. I don’t really remember what led up to it, but a few of my friends talked me into driving down to Philly from Upsala College, in East Orange, to see The Dead at the Spectrum.

I did not have a ticket, but they said we might be able to scalp one…so we piled into my blue, 1980 Subaru hatchback, and we headed for the New Jersey Turnpike! The trip down was not very memorable, although I do remember being in a ‘race’ with a guy in a Chevy Citation X-11 during the drive. He kept trying to catch up to us and pass us, but could not, for try as he might, he was always just a little bit behind, his X-11 being no match for the Japanese might that is Subaru!

Looking back now, I count myself lucky that I did not get the attention of the NJ State Police, because I was moving pretty fast, and we were drinking and partaking of illegal substances during the trip!

Eventually, we got to the exit to Philadelphia, waved good bye to the X-11, and made our way across the bridge and into the city, and drove to the old Spectrum.

When we parked, my friends once again assured me that I would have no problem getting a ticket, “There are always people selling tickets in the parking lot.” However, after wandering the lot for more than half an hour, all we found were badly counterfeited tickets, and I figured out pretty quick that I would not be getting in to see the Grateful Dead that night. I was disappointed, but not that much, I kind of expected to be shut out.

However, my friends took pity on me, after all I did drive them all the way down there, knowing that I might not get to see the concert…and they were counting on me to drive them home!

So they gave me some beers and a few other ‘supplies’ and we agreed to meet at the car after the show, and I bid them well.

As the crowds filed into the auditorium I was wondering what I would do for the next three hours or so, and began to wander around the lot.

I soon found that there were almost as many people outside as in the concert! Most were hanging out in lawn chairs and partying in the lot. Others were wandering, like I was, some selling all kinds of items, from t-shirts to drugs, or just meeting up with friends they knew from other concerts. Most of the people I met were really friendly and would invite me to come over and hang out for a while.

I shared what I had, and they shared what they had and we would talk about the band, and listen to the music filtering out from inside of the Spectrum, so it was really chill.

During the course of the evening, I found myself on a bus with a cute girl, who had stayed behind to watch the vehicle and all her friends’ stuff. She told me that someone volunteered to stay behind  and watch the bus at every concert.

We smoked and had some beers, and shared a few other substances and got just a little ‘friendly’ but nothing outrageous. It was fun and she wound up giving me a tie-dyed t-shirt that was way too small, but I did not care. By the time we parted, it was getting late and I figured that the concert would be ending soon, so I stopped with the substances and the beer, and decided to walk around and try to sober up before the drive back home.

As I made a circuit of the parking lot I came across and incident that is still very clear in my memory!

I saw a crowd of people just standing around and wanted to see what was going on. Somehow, I made my way to the front of the crowd, where I saw a circle of mounted Police, surrounded a guy who had stripped down to his drawers, he was obviously messed up as he was standing there barefoot, screaming and throwing bottles on the ground! When he ran of them, he would pick up the broken pieces and slam them back on the ground and scream!

He was not throwing them at the cops, nor was he screaming at them, and they were just watching him, perhaps hoping he would wear himself out. To be honest, I don’t think the guy knew the cops were there…not yet any way. While I was watching, another guy ran up to him, I assumed he was a friend, and he was trying to talk him down, afraid he’d get hurt and arrested, and then hurt some more.

After a few minutes they both sat down on the ground and the cops moved in, put him in handcuffs and put him in an ambulance that had just arrived!

With the excitement over, I made my way back to the car, to find my friends waiting there for me. They apologized again because I had to stay in the parking lot, and asked if I had a good time and just said “It was interesting.” And I proceeded to tell them what I could.

We hung out long enough for the lot to begin to empty and they gave me the supplies I needed to make sure I would be able to stay awake for the ride home.

There was no X-11 on the trip back to East Orange, but we had fun, as they told me how great the concert was, and I regaled them with tales of the parking lot.

I have seen several concerts in my life, some were big names in big venues, others were smaller shows, watched from lawns at Snug Harbor or Green Lane Park, I even made it to the Spectrum once more before it was closed down, when I took my daughter to see N’Sync when she was nine. However, I never did get to see The Dead in concert, but the evening in the parking lot was the most memorable concert I never got to go to!