Journaling all the days of my life
It means everything
Recently, on a nothing-else-planned-because-I’m-sick lazy Saturday morning I spent almost two hours looking online for next year’s new journal.
More specifically, I’m seeking a horizontal weekly monthly calendar, in preparation for next year. This is the format I’ve been using since I started journaling consistently 17 years ago.
I searched high and low, including custom options. I spent far more time on this than I intended but the more I looked the more determined I became. No luck.
Why is it so hard to find something that should be so simple? And why do they keep changing the weekly page formatting on brands that I’ve used for years which makes a notebook into which I entrust so many aspects of myself become something totally inadequate?
The format into which I pour my actions and inactions, doings and feelings, and little tidbits of living, is quite important to me. I am almost certain that this is the most meaningful task that I undertake every single day. To spend this kind of time searching (once again, sigh) for the perfect notebook, is no waste of time, even if it is a bit (or a lot) frustrating.
In fact, my journal is a testament to each of the days of my life.
My first diary started as an assignment to log daily from my Montessori school teacher. It’s fascinating to look back and see glimpses of my young life. (“We went to Price Club and I bought a miniature library with a secret drawer.” It seems I’ve been an avid reader as well as a Costco shopper for as long as I can remember!)
I kept various diaries on and off in my teens and twenties, although I find it a bit challenging to re-read my writings from those years of my life, even if my struggles did contribute to who I am and where I am now. (“I’m just so paralyzed. I don’t know how to be happy. I don’t even really know why I’m so unhappy.” Wow, do I just want to grab that girl and hug her and tell her everything is going to be okay!)
Eventually, I stopped journaling completely and felt perfectly fine about it. I may never have kept a journal again if it had not been for a certain trip to Palm Springs with my late husband Dan.
On this particular trip, we sat around toward the end reminiscing about how great the week had been. We realized we didn’t know on what day we had done what spectacular thing (everything in Palm Springs was spectacular to us!) For some reason it mattered, a lot, attempting to remember those days and the joy they brought us.
Even with Dan’s terminal cancer diagnosis hanging over us, every normal day was a joy with each other. But we felt like every day in Palm Springs was pure heaven. Our trips there were our oasis away from the dank darkness of Seattle and the grind of daily life. More importantly, it was a way to “escape” from Dan’s ongoing cancer saga. For just a few days in the sun and warmth, surrounded by palm trees and desert and mountains, we were free.
We did not then, or ever, want to let go of our experiences there. I am not exaggerating when I say we cried every time we left.
And so, the next day, while still on vacation, we went into the Barnes & Noble in Palm Desert and found a wire-bound weekly calendar. I was so glad that we were able to recreate that trip for my brand-new journal. After that I started writing down what we did on our vacations so that we would have a record upon which to reminisce and reflect.
I also found myself recording stuff like important markers from Dan’s monthly bloodwork at Seattle Cancer Care, the results of which were a monthly catalyst for sheer joy or total despair. Such is life with (and loving one with) metastatic cancer. It came naturally, jotting down these and other factors I deemed valuable to preserve or track.
And then at some point over the following year or so, it started feeling important to capture as much as possible every day. It became a habit and a ritual.
I’ve been keeping a daily journal ever since. It means everything.
The last time I missed a day of writing was a couple of weeks over Christmas shortly before Dan died. There was a lot going on and I didn’t write. When I look back, I regret not documenting those last days of his life, no matter how stressful it was, how exhausted I was.
Now they are gone forever, some of my final days with my beloved husband, blank in my mind because I didn’t capture them on paper.
Since then, I haven’t missed a day. I find great comfort in keeping my journals, in which I preserve so many moments and experiences. I do not think it’s too much to ask for the perfectly formatted calendar notebook.
The search continues.
Our days in this life are so precious that I don’t want to let them go.
So, I don’t.
This post is thought provoking to me, Pri. I stopped journalling long ago, more than 15 years ago, yet I've continued to keep a calendar that records many things. I may rethink this. I find the calendars important to me, yet the element of depth/reflection remains in my memory rather than recorded on paper.
I have been journaling since 2007. It is a part of my morning routine and I will never give it up. But I don’t use pretty journals. I just use school notebooks. I filled quite a few.