You should write, even if it's only for yourself
Lessons learned from a past self, along with some early 2000s nostalgia
Before getting into it, a PSA: I’ve started regarding my Substack as a space to think more deeply about the topics that bother and excite me, which means that you’ll get some musings on writing and publication, but also content on life and meaningless suffering. So, if you keep reading, know that you will not just be getting Sophie the Writer, but Sophie, the Deeply Troubled Individual. Haha. You’ve been warned.
My recall is terrible. Often, I begin to tell a story from my past that was significant or funny, only to give a watered-down version because I can’t remember the particular details. Once, I told my friend about a soft serve shop near my house that I had been going to since I was in high school, yet when she asked what its name was, I could not remember it. I knew what letter it began with, but it felt like the name was just beyond my grasp, floating about in a gray space whose depths I reached into again and again, yet I knew each word I grabbed onto wasn't correct. It was only several hours later, in the middle of another completely irrelevant task, that the answer appeared at the forefront of my mind like it had been there all along. I struggle with the same thing when writing, knowing there is one word that captures what I want to say, but unable to remember. There are few things more frustrating than knowing you have the answer but being unable to access it.
If there are so many words that have slipped through the gaps of my memory, what about moments? As I write my second book, part of which is set in the early 2000s, I have been sifting through my childhood, trying to recall what it was like to grow up during that decade, and the trends that were part of my life. Through my research, I am surprised by what emerges. A Reddit thread reminds me of the Flash games I used to obsess over, how I spent a summer playing some game where you capture bees in soap bubbles. Suddenly, I even remember the name of the website, and I'm shocked by how my brain has managed to hold onto this when I sometimes can't even remember what I did last weekend. Listening to an old P!nk song, I remember the blue iPod nano I used to own and how I filled it with songs that I thought were the cool songs to listen to, but that I actually didn't like that much. Watching Didi, I remember the slang that we used to use and that one year we had "totally swank" as a multiple choice answer on our standardized tests. I remember upside-down smileys, weird AIM usernames, LiveJournal and Tumblr. How vivid those memories are, how heightened my emotions during that phase of my life. But it also makes me wonder—does being older mean that more experiences become less impactful? I don't want that. I want to continue being thrilled, embarrassed, and overjoyed. I want to still be passionate about life.
I have another hypothesis for why my memories from my childhood were so much stronger. That time felt so IRL. Phones were not really a distraction, especially if your parents didn’t give you any money to pay 10 cents a text. You couldn’t just dip your head and pretend to look busy. There was a lot of time spent being bored and marinating in embarrassment. Once, my friend organized a “Dare Day” where we went to the mall and pulled random dares out of a box. Someone was dared to knock off Santa Claus’s hat and she actually did it! We were such little sh!ts…
When I was older, I would come home and see my Gen Z sister sitting next to three of her friends on the couch, all of them on their phones. I never did that with my friends. We didn’t have the option. We were stuck with each other, and it was up to us to entertain each other. We also didn’t have the ability to constantly be taking photos. Studies have found that taking photos can actually impair memory because capturing that perfect shot takes up some of our cognitive load and disengages us from the actual moment.
So, if photos aren’t even the answer to keeping our memories, then what is? In 2020, my new year’s resolution was to journal every day for the entire year. To write something down even if nothing happened. What a year to decide to journal every day. And yet, I am so glad I did. It’s a piece of history and an artifact of my feelings at the time. Of course I remember the stress, the uncertainty, the thrill of our once-a-week trip to Costco. But there are little gems of a daily life that I’d forgotten, until I scrolled through and saw something like this:
If we let the present consume our lives, we forget how much learning can be found in the past. I think that's an important part of journaling—doing the actual writing but also revisiting it. In reading my old entries, I discovered that I tend to journal when I feel negative. So many of my entries are about being nervous, being stressed, being fearful. There is a slew of entries around the time of my debut, comparing myself to others and worrying about my book's eventual performance. There is one entry celebrating the book finally being out and seeing all my friends show up for me, a single bright pinprick amidst the darkness. As if only the blindingly brilliant moments are worth capturing forever, even while I fastidiously log every unhappiness. The present me, with the benefit of hindsight, wants to shake the past me by the shoulders and tell her to enjoy what's happening, instead of trying to leap ahead into the future where everything is wrong again. I don't want to dismiss these moments when I'm in them and then miss them when they're gone.
I even said it myself in one of my entries: "I need to start journaling when I'm happy, too." That’s something I’ll try to do more in 2025. To record the moments when I feel good because those are just as important to capture and remember. If I only record the rough times, I will slowly forget the happy ones. I've been capturing random meals and jotting down thoughts, and it’s freeing to know this is just for me. I don’t need to be grammatically correct or sound especially eloquent. This is my version of self-care, and a type of focusing. It makes me dig into why I feel the way I do while noticing the small things around me. It helps me pay attention, which I think requires more of an active effort now, when there's so much content we are consuming at every moment. It’s also making me recall more of the words that describe happiness. In doing so, I am beginning to appreciate what's around me, instead of hyper-focusing on whatever's swirling around inside me. When I look back at these entries, I hope I see someone who, in the middle of all the angsting, found ways to be happy, too.
Something I wrote today: Nothing!! I turned in my draft! I’m freeeeee!