Beyond Kondo

I jumped right on the Kondo wagon. Inspired by having just cleaned out Grandma Amy’s house, full to bursting with the collections of a lifetime. Inspired by big changes in my life, including a recent move back to Florida and a new baby on the way. The massive declutter was a success. Kondo is right about mostly everything.

There’s just one subcategory of personal belongings that stumped me, and for which I could find no help in Marie Kondo’s magic book. I’ve been a big journaler for quite a while now. In my early twenties I spent some time on another wagon, and the habit of morning pages stuck with me. This means I have (multiple) boxes of journals filled with the stream-of-consciousness, unfiltered and uncensored dumping of my morning mind.

And listen: it’s some pretty weird shit.

My first impulse on finding the journals, following directions like the Good Catholic Schoolgirl I am, was to ditch them ceremoniously. I held them in my hands, and they didn’t spark joy. Something more like disgust or even fear. In the next instant, I broke the rules just a little, like the Good Catholic Schoolgirl I am, and started to leaf through the pages.

Aside from nonsensical ramblings, the journals contain dreams from nights before, occasional records of events, and some very honest outpourings of feelings from my 20’s decade, which was, I must say, fraught with feelings. I made a few cross-country moves, played in a bunch of bands, grappled with the meaning of real love, got married and divorced. The more I read, the more I felt a sense of connection to self and even something like pride—I’ve worked through some tough emotional territory over these years, and I've managed to come out the other side.

I thought of the lack of women's voices throughout history, more specifically accounts of their daily lives. Nowadays we have massive accounts of everyone's daily lives thanks to social media BUT as we all know these accounts are written for an audience, filtered and censored and largely bullshit.

So I wondered: is there some value to this one woman’s uncensored account of real life? (And am I ok with a curious grandchild one day perusing these accounts?) Or is it enough just to acknowledge the value they have to me now? The reassurance that I worked hard, that I came through, that I let myself become raw and exposed? Isn’t that intrinsically inspiring? And isn’t it a joyful thing to look back at what your feelings actually were at some particular moment and understand yourself better in doing so, then and now?

Here’s what Henri has to say, when challenged about his own journal-keeping:

“I don’t care about the facts, Domino. I care about how I feel. How I feel will change, I want to remember that.”

In the end, I abandoned all my ideas for proper fire and water journal funerals and gave my tomes a place of honor in the overhead closet shelf. They sit in a stack, exposed, a colorful mosaic of bindings ready to be dusted again and again, perhaps one day opened by that curious grandchild. Perhaps one day opened by me, when I need to remember.

 *on nodding terms