Same Old Stuff: Jimi Hendrix’s Journal

If you’re ever in Seattle, the Museum of Pop Culture (aka MoPop) is a worthy visit. If you’re being touristy, it’s right next door to the Space Needle (the monorail literally goes through it), so you might as well stop in. Take pictures with the Soundgarden statue while you’re there.

Anyway, on the inside for as long as I can remember, is the Jimi Hendrix Wild Blue Angel exhibit, chronicling Jimi’s life from 1966–1970. Shown in that exhibit are his personal journals. In some cases, he’s recalling his meetings with music executives. Other times, he’s jotting down song lyrics that may have become one of his hits.

Then there are other days when Hendrix had nothing to say. But, he still wrote something. “Same old stuff”, which he would later shorten to “S.O.S.”. Even Jimi Hendrix had mundane days.

I once heard someone mention finding a journal in an abandoned home. The journal was 100 years old, which gave a glimpse of the life of a teenage girl in the early 1900s. Doesn’t matter if the person was noteworthy or not, the story is still interesting. Later you get Hendrix bouncing between busy days and days where he’s bored off his ass. Those boring days still matter. They still show what his life was like. They still tell his story.

I have days where I write very little and it goes nowhere. I have other days where I write very little at first, and it explodes into a thousand-word essay. I really never know sometimes. But, I think we put too much pressure on ourselves sometimes to always be interesting, when really sometimes the uninteresting is just as interesting. It still shows our life cycles and that’s as much the point of journaling as anything.

Sometimes, it’s just the “same old stuff” and that’s fine. Relax.