I have a problem with learning logs. It's a diary by any other name but with a spoecific purpose. I keep notes, thoughts and impressions but not in a very orderly fashion and certainly not in a coherent stream. I knwo this should be part of my habit as a (would be) writer but I have always had a problem with diaries.
Sometimes I have kept secrets of my friends, observations and feelings that I would prefer to forget, dilute and dissipate with time and distance. But with a diary you refresh it evertime it's read - the emotions come back hard and sharp, tearing through time and into the closed scars . I found an old diary some months ago, 1990, when I was living at home, doing overtime and saving for my first house.
An exciting time you would think - four years into my 26 year career, eager to get on and get my own place; in love - a love of sorts.
I wrote in this spiral notebook diary everyday for ten months; kept cuttings, wrote down historical dates and anniversaries and more. I recorded the buying of some plaster of paris for a project to cast my face and my lovers. A hot August day, the 26th we covered our faces in vaseline to ensure the plaster would not stick to eyebrows and hairline. Straws were inserted in our nostrils and we each became encased in the mixture which heated up as it set; a very strange experience. My diary records that I was planning on "tidying up" the cast made and then creating a mask. It never happened - the cast got place in the garage, wrapped in cloths and put aside while I found my way to affording a new home and losing my lover - both the mask template and the "affair" was left unfinished. The mask is still in my shed....the dairy found in a box. Like a pair of ghosts. Thwounds are healed but as with the affair and the mask - things have been left unfinished.
I fear diaries. They are you from back then speaking to yourself that is now...and the voice and perspective is different.
I can cobble my notes and observations together and the learning journal is there but I rely on my memory and the notes made for the assignments I hand in as my record of thinking and reactions. I am going to try harder and put down my thoughts - this has to be done, not for the first time, my tutor has encouraged me to open up. As with most of my life, friendships and relationships I will - but it may take me longer to get the courage and discipline.
