Apparently, I used to write multiple times a day

I found my old journals last night. It was unintentional. I was cleaning a shelf and opened boxes I had ignored for years, when I stumbled across a couple of my old journal notebooks with loose pages. Some of them still had dates written carefully on the first page. Others were covered in stickers. One of them even had names of people I randomly met or no longer talk to.

Since it's almost midnight, I told myself I would read only a few entries. But instead, I spent hours sitting on the floor turning page after page. I was completely absorbed in a version of myself I had almost forgotten.

I laughed and laughed as I read my entries. I never realized I wrote cringey things back then, mostly about how much I hated doing the laundry and about my favorite TV drama. I wrote mostly about my crushes, mentioning how I am falling in love with them in multiple entries. Heck, teenagers really write about predictable things. But what surprised me wasn't the content. It was my consistency. I wrote regularly back then, like multiple times a day. I filled entire notebooks without thinking twice.

But damn, now I struggle to finish even two pages. 

At some point over the years, writing became harder for me, even though life itself became fuller. I have more experiences now, more stories and complicated emotions, and more understanding of the world. By all reason, I should have more to write about. But I often find myself staring at blank pages with nothing to say. Or worse, too much to say all at once.

Maybe writing was easier when I was younger because I had not yet learned how to hold back.

Back then, I wrote everything down without shame. I wrote unapologetically every minor disappointment, every single interaction with someone I admire, and every fleeting thought I had. I was never worried whether my writing sounded intelligent or meaningful. The act itself was enough. The younger me thinks writing wasn't a performance. But now I edit myself before I even begin.

I think adulthood does that to people. You become more aware of how you sound. You become more careful, and your thoughts compete with responsibilities, distractions, plus the constant pressure to stay functional. There is less silence now. Less boredom, less time spent sitting alone with your own mind long enough to hear what it is trying to say. Reading my old journals made me realize how attentive I used to be to my own life. I noticed things back then. I wrote about ordinary afternoons, the weather, conversations with my siblings, songs playing in the background, and even wrote about the feeling of walking towards the bus stop after school. Nothing was too small to document. But I stopped paying that kind of attention and convinced myself that ordinary moments no longer deserved to be remembered.

Lately, my life feels less documented. It's been more than a month since my last journal entry, and days blur together quickly now. Sometimes I wonder how many memories I have already lost simply because I never wrote them down. Maybe that is why finding these old journals of mine affected me so much. They felt like proof that there was once a version of me who moved through life more slowly.