Writing What I Want The Way I Want

Doing: watching Late Night and muting the really awful band performing tonight...
I'm really impressed with myself for actually writing in this thing for 5 days straight. My paper journal doesn't see this much action in probably a 20 day span. Though I guess I usually only write in that journal when I'm inspired, or need to do the hashing out of self-analyzation, or can't sleep. It's alot easier it seems to type away on the keys about the frivolous day to day activities one goes through, the mundane moments of existence and still expect that no one will read about it. Odd, that I'd decide to include the really boring details of my life in an online journal, where there is potential that other people will see it, people I know in fact. (well that's provided they've decided it was worth glancing at SOME point in time - though they'd probably not last long with my stream of consciousness randomness) I sometimes forget, journal (more like personal essay) writing is alot like writing papers for my English classes, they always work better with a main point, body, and concluding statement. Oh, and probably breaking up the mussings into paragraphs! Course, I don't write in my "written" journal with the intent to have other people understand it, I write in it when I feel the need to, and when the mood strikes me. I"m not sure I could really get totally into the online process here, of typing away, instead of writing things out by hand.
I was always that weird kid in study hall that was scribbling away in her notebook. I was the one that would read the beginnings of countless pieces of fiction (composed over the brief 20 minutes at lunch) to any of my friends who didn't get out of the library fast enough, or probably see me coming (poor guys, thank you btw and yes Jaime, when I DO finally publish my first book, I will dedicate it to you for all your diligent readership). I subjected my mother to so many 5 page beginnings without middles and ends that she can take it no longer, and simply will not listen "unless it has an end." I've written three complete short stories in my lifetime, one that was for high school creative writing class, and therefore HAD to have an end, (and we know I'm at least academically motivated enough to end something) one for the young writer's conference (I'm particularly fond of that one, if I do say so) and one that I wrote, then ended up using for a class assignment a year later. So I have piles upon piles of old notebooks, now packed away in storage, that contain random smatterings of dialouge between highly underdeveloped characters in the most mundane or unusual situations and for the life of me I can't part with them.
I still write any rough draft of a term paper on notebook paper first. Isn't that absurd? Truly, I agree that it is, especially in this age of technology and the fastpaced advantages of a word proccessor. It's not that I can't type, or that I"m slow, or afraid of technology- far from it, as I type at a good clip, I compose emails on screen, and can chat away with friends and family. I think maybe I find comfort in the personal nature of my own handwriting - well for some reason that sounded vain. Perhaps it's just the feel of a good piece of three hole punched college rule sitting in front of me, and the flow of ink from a nice pen. I'm not sure. I guess I can call myself old-fashioned for that statement afterall.
I have typed and formatted many of my poems which were first written on notebook paper of course. A few of them have since been published (nothing to brag about though) and while they seem official and neat in the "I've been published" sort of way, I still miss the copies with the scrawls and scratched out words and the tea stains in the corners. Last year I found myself taking all these typed poems, and transfering the "finished versions" into a leather bound 200 or so blank page book. Yes, I rewrote each poem by hand. Yes, they have a polished feel about them now, to be in a leather bound book, fancy indeed, but more importantly they are distinguishable as mine. My thoughts, my expressive energy, poured forth on to the page. Simply noted in the strange combination of print and cursive that I use daily.
Perhaps I'm just looking for a sense of nostalga. Reaching back to the time before I knew how to type, when I used to scribble away for hours writing epic tales of young girls and their horses until my hand would cramp up and I'd simply have to take a break. The time when the thoughts of characters and the descriptions of their settings were so vivid in my mind's eye that I couldn't transcribe them fast enough. A time when I wasn't writing/creating for other people, I was writing simply because I was compelled to do so. It was fun. It was a hobby. It was a daily thing.
So I guess I return, in some sense to the childhood ways I had, of writing on a regular basis, though this time in a different format, a strange augmentation of personal and impersonal at the same time. As well as a new genre of more personal essay style writing. Well, perhaps I can't abandon my dabbling in fiction and poetry completely and will have to post a few "smatterings" also.