Someone asked me recently
What drives me to write in a journal,
Just a page or two each day.
I have been waiting to answer this question myself
And was amazed that an outside social-media voice
Prompted my response.
Here's what I had to say:

"I want to remember the person I actually turned out to be at this point in time and not let poor memory resort to stereotypes to describe my 20s. I made a mistake I think not writing earlier because there’s a lot I don’t remember from the previous decade.  I want to remember the ordinary moments and to record where I showed my humanness and where I failed. I want to remind myself that, as swelled of a head as I can have most times, that I am human too and I’d like to be that person who has stories and moments that can relate to what people consider embarrassing or wrong so not to shame themselves for actions and words stumbled across by people left and right. It’s one thing to feel guilty about something; it’s another thing to feel like the world ended because of one moment, like how I have treated a lot of my own life moments."

I don't journal for myself entirely,
Yet I do take pleasure in that time of concentration.
To live in the present is the goal,
To live in the future is understandable,
But to remember how I lived in the past
Reminds me I have been human all the way up to now.