Meeting my past self
A comic from my sketchbook archives and the value of journal reviews
For more of my short comics:
Though I am an avid keeper of notebooks of all kinds, I don’t regularly look at notebooks from my past. I think of all of my ideas that are unmade and unwritten, and how there is barely enough time to give shape to any of those. Why waste time on what’s already been made?
One of
’s winter creative practices (recommended in her book A Year in Practice) is to do a journal review, transferring and organizing ideas that can be distilled into future themes, assignments, or projects to carry you through the following seasons. Once fully reviewed, the journal can be archived and you can feel a satisfaction in putting it away.Upon trying this practice for myself, I found that I could barely tolerate reading more than a few diaristic pages at a time. Notes jotted from lectures, books, long walks, or dreams were more actionable. The best cookie crumbs were stored away in my sketchbooks, such as the below spread from 2021 that became today’s comic.
Looking at the date, I must have drawn these pages in my sketchbook only a few weeks after a bad car accident that brought up a lot of my inner child’s unmet needs. Since then I continue to do a lot of inner child work through journaling, artmaking, affirmations, and lately EMDR.
Seeing this comic briefly engulfed me in the shame I felt in 2021, but I also discovered how much I’ve grown since then. I allowed myself to feel the pain of my past shame, gave her a hug, then sat down to finish this comic.
It’s a nice moment of synchronicity to find my own art about struggling to look at the past while looking at remnants of my past. I didn’t make much headway on rereading and archiving my notebooks, but I am slowly learning the art of befriending the past.
I’ll end by sharing artist & technologist Michelle Huang’s inner child AI chatbot. By feeding a chatbot model a selection of her past diary entries, she was able to simulate conversing with her inner child.
Conversing with "younger Michelle" reminded me of the parts of myself that have stayed constant through the years, but also of the parts that I forgot or buried as life went on. It was like holding a mirror to an unapologetic, more earnest, and pure version of my own essence.
Our past notebooks can show us what we care about most—what we’ve always cared about throughout our years. It can remind us of the depth of our emotions and the wholeness of our humanity. Instead of rushing towards the future, why not take a moment to embrace our past?
I love the notebook on your crushes. I am in the process of going through all my art journals and taking out the things I think work. The idea of condensing them into another working art journal sounds insightful and useful. Thank you for sharing.
What a beautiful comic, Carolyn! I revisited some of my high school diaries (and recreated them in my graphic memoir, lol) and it was super cringey, but I came to feel somewhat maternal toward that long-ago self. Thanks for the Suskin book rec!