Journals

Do you ever miss writing in your journal? I do. I used to write in it like crazy. When I was young(er) I was in the habit of writing in it every day. There were times where I went without it being daily, but I liked it so much that I always went back to writing in it every night.

I've been in grad school for 6 years now. For the first few years I was pretty good at writing in my journal. I probably wrote a bunch of days every month. But for the last few years I have written just a time or two per month. It's easy to keep track of because I open a new document for each month and I label them by month and year. Lately, more often than not, I have skipped a month, written once in the document, then skipped a month before writing again.

Bummer.

There are lots of things about this stage of my life that I will want to remember so I feel bad for not writing about more of it. There is one redeeming claim on these memories. Besides writing for the intent of posterity reading about my life, I have a habit of writing down a list or snapshot of what's going on in my life. You know me: I try to do too many thing at once. It has been my practice to offload my thoughts onto paper or a list that I title, "What's going on." I do an emotional/brain dump and get it all out. So there is a separate record of what I've been up to.

I've been thinking about getting back into my journal more again. Honestly, it probably would have started already except there really are a lot of things going on right now with graduation and hunting for a job. ("Hunting," ha! Sounds like I'm tracking down an animal. Actually, there are similarities...) I also think of this blog as a sort of journal. I tend to write about what's going on in my life and tie it into gospel principles so it's not a comprehensive look at my life.

Let me tell you about my favorite memories of writing in my journal. In 6th grade, my teacher Mr. Abegg forced us to write in our journals during class. Yes, forced. That's what I thought back then. I still have that journal. The cover is a picture that I drew in pencil about a castle LEGO set that I had back then and I drew a moat around it with a drawbridge. The castle guards are standing around talking about how boring their job is. The lead guard overhears them and he says, "I heard that." I get a kick out of that every time I read it. There are also my favorite entries that I look for every time I open that journal. I remember a day at recess playing football with a new student named Joey. We had organized recess football teams and we were on the same team. He was also on my competition soccer team. 6th grade was the only year I play competition and we won 1st place in the league! Woo!

Another fun journal memory is of my grandma. She would pay me for writing in my journal. It sounds too good to be true for a kid, but I am grateful that she did it. Her method of payment was gummy worms. She gave me 1 worm for every 5 lines I wrote. Totally awesome. My dad also got me to write in my journal in much the same way. I felt like he got it from her. Maybe I told him about it and he kept up the good habit.

I love writing in my journal. When I read about my ancestors I feel connected to them through their words. I think the same will happen with my descendants. Who knows! There are some embarrassing things I've written in my journal, but I hope it shows that I'm a normal person with weaknesses. Maybe it will help someone out.