Welcome back, Highlife!

Don't worry about not being very far yet. Everyone starts somewhere -- in fact, I definitely recognize the symptoms of the whole absence thing, since I've been at it and off it with large intervals in between as well.
About your DJ Question: Short answer, yes, you can.
Long answer: You could, but it's generally not advised. What aspect are you struggling with, in particular? Is it the effort to write in it regularly, or staying up to write as soon as you remember, rather than going back to sleep? Because, in the end, the main goal of keeping a journal is dream recall, which is nice to have, because otherwise you might be forgetting your lucid dreams too! But there are other things we can do to log our dreams. Find what works for you.

Some quick suggestions:

-Instead of writing down your dreams completely, use keywords. You can quickly jot them down effortlessly and they'll spark the memories to come back when you wake up later. When doing this, I would still recommend you to log the full dream at a later time, however. You really do want to tell your brain that you want it to remember your dreams, rather than simply forget them once you wake up.
-Similarly to writing keywords, you might like making drawings. They don't have to be pretty, as long as you know what they mean.
-Perhaps you'd rather type than write. You can use a phone application for this. You can also simply voice log this way.
-There's also mindmaps, and a ton of different other ways you could go about recalling your dreams. I suggest you visit this topic: http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-sign...ompendium.html

If you have any other questions regarding recall, just post here: Dream Signs and Recall !
Or, you could hop onto IRC chat, and the people there can help you. Good luck!