I have exciting news to share: You can now read Inside Amy’s Mind in the new Substack app for iPhone.
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The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.
Nobody knows me better than my journal does, not even myself. There are words in there I don’t remember writing, moments that cease to exist, and feelings that aren’t part of me anymore. My journal is my best friend. It’s my safe space. The one place where I don’t have to be scared to make a mistake because I can simply scribble it out and keep going. I used to always feel this pressure to make the pages of my journal “aesthetically pleasing”, usually after seeing “bullet-journal guides” all over my YouTube recommended. As if someone’s journal is better than mine, more efficient, useful, even cuter. But me, not being the slightest artistically talented, couldn’t quite find the time or effort to keep up with that. And while we’re on the topic, does anyone ever actually keep up with these wildly intricate daily pages of their bullet journal? Journals should be a reflection of you, they should be your raw thoughts, without filter, without much effort or thought. Like the one friend you have where you feel most like yourself around. I could explain it to be like the meme of “when I said I wouldn’t tell anybody, I didn’t mean my best friend.” My journal knows everything. As it should be. And it’s never been a “Dear Diary,” type of welcome but always some form of “I’m so happy to be back” following any sort of life update, even if it’s been less than 24 hours.
Now, the amount of journal pages I have burned through is beyond me. But I’ve made a promise with myself to complete one journal to its last page, before moving onto a new one. I am now finishing my third “book of my life” since that was established.
My third one, is this one and it’s on the last day of it’s life, quite frankly taking its last breaths as we speak, before being left to die on the white bookshelf above my bed. Only to be recognized once in a blue moon, when the double edged swords of deep cleaning and feeling overly sentimental cross paths.
Like I said before, this yellow journal has become my closest and most valuable companion. The pages have met all of my people, helping me realize what they may have taught me. It’s caught some of my tears, leaving some words to leak their ink, and crinkle up a small piece of the page. It’s seen me through 3 jobs, and aided in finding encouragement within myself to leave, to reassure myself we have grown past this. And its joined me on all of my travels since it’s birth, through Florida, Virginia, Hawaii, The Carolinas, Texas, Arkansas, Iowa, Italy, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, and The Netherlands. You can say that’s a very well traveled and cultured book. If I left home without it (very rare), I felt as if I was missing a limb, incomplete so to say.
To be honest, I’m not so sure why I feel so attached to this journal, and so saddened having to see it’s last page. I’m not sure why I feel the need to write all about it’s completion either. Maybe this is my way of “honoring” her (my journal) for everything she’s done for me and taught me. All of the inner child work I’ve committed to seeing through, the hard facts I had to face, but finding and holding onto the positive that comes from every lesson. I know it’s silly to pay my respect to a stupid little journal, considering it was ME doing the work and saying the words, not the journal. I just feel like this one specifically, transformed so many parts of myself for the better, and I need to thank her. She was there for me when nobody else was, and always listened (without interrupting haha).
But if I could take away one lesson I’ve come to learn during the life of my little yellow journal is that everything is temporary. Nothing will last forever, and you just have to keep going, keep turning the pages. Tangible moments slip away into blurry memories so fast, and you have to learn to be ok with it. The only constant thing in life is change, I can promise you that. I had to say many goodbyes during this period of my life, and I wouldn’t say they ever got easier for me, but now I know, they are inevitable. It’s time to say goodbye to this journal, to whom I’ve shedded and became within this time frame, dot my last period, and close this chapter. Literally. All of the moments the pages and I have shared that once were my reality, will now be a memory. All of the major feelings that I couldn’t run from, but wanted to, the realizations that pained me but created me, the love, the loss. Love and loss, love and loss. The continuing and persistent notions of life, they will remain, no matter what pages you find yourself in within the story of your life. There will always be an infinite amount. We will never love loss, but we can never lose love. The yin and yang to life is right there, right here beneath our noses. I am losing these pages but loving what they have done for me. What they have allowed me to do for myself, I should say.
Now bear with me because if I haven’t been too overly sentimental over an inanimate (but very much alive to me) object just yet, it’s about to get worse.
I think everything has meaning behind it, it could be my biggest strength or weakness, whatever you’d like to think of it, so I over analyze EVERYTHING (yea probably a weakness I guess). But listen to this:
My first important journal was a flimsy, spiral notebook that had the clear film on the front like a binder, where you can slide things in. I had just started dipping my toes into manifestation and spirituality, so naturally I made the front cover a little vision board montage and I thought I was the most creative person ever for doing that. Making your journal a vision board? Genius of course. In that journal I would manifest and manifest and manifest. That’s it really.
This current journal we’ve been talking of is yellow (if you haven’t caught that for the 500th time). I started this journal right after one of my best friends had passed, and he was my yellow. His aura was lime green with a hint of yellow, for a fact and I always told him that. He loved it. A few days after everything, I visited his family and his mom gave me one of his favorite yellow bucket hats (if you knew him, you knew his most prized possession was the whole dresser he had full of only bucket hats) saying “Rocky told me you loved yellow, you were the yellow and he was the green”. I found myself within the yellow journal, and I don’t believe in “coincidences”. So thank you, Rocky. It also had an outer pocket on the cover, where I would stuff random letters to/ from people, notes to myself, my traveling vision board, old baby pictures and a scrap paper from when I talked to an astrologer about my birth chart. It has scribbles of me quickly writing while he quickly rambled like “Sag moon- understanding others easily, a great story teller, I endure a lot of hardships in order to grow and teach, philosophical, traveler, sensitive, intuitive, and emotional. Will go through many deep transformational periods.” That’s me. If anyone wanted to learn EVERYTHING about me, they simply just need this journal. I also think during this time of my life I really stepped into my sensitivity, and everything inside of my journal pocket proves that to be true.
Now, my new journal that got gifted to me is tan with the world map covering it. With big letters on the back corner saying “MADE IN ITALY”. I’ll take that. Does this hopefully anticipate I will be all over the world with this journal? Again, I don’t believe in coincidences, so I hope so. It’s beautiful and I am so excited to see who I become within my fresh, new pages.
Now to over analyze this, naturally:
Every one of my journals so far has been a direct example of my life in the moment. My first one exhibiting my newfound love for manifesting, and kind of young looking, messy, dreamy, hopeful. My second one being yellow (for Rocky) but also because I was forced to find the bright side of many dark situations, and it was plain maybe for being in the midst of trying to figure myself out, maybe creating a blank slate for myself. Now my new one, being the world map, I hope brings me many many travels. We shall see about that one, but I have a good feeling for it.
Okay I am done rambling on about my silly little notebook that nobody cares about but me. The world is dying and I’m sad about ending a silly little notebook. It’s a silly little life, I suppose. Go show love to your words, your personal deaths and the rebirths of yourself, and underline all of your favorite quotes you had said to yourself in your silly little journal!!! You’ll feel like a silly little author. Okay really I’m done now, I just silly little annoyed myself.