The Joy of Journaling

In addition to blogging and the Journal Project I’ve done with my Grandmother, I also keep a pretty regular written journal myself. It’s always a big day when I get to start a new journal, and today I started journal #8 with a crisp new title page to write the start date on, and attempt some flourish at writing my name.

I haven’t always been a habitual Journal keeper. I started when I was 12 years old, and though I often wrote daily, there are gaps here and there of a month, and occasionally a year.   The early journals have fun details like crazy day,

A description of my mom’s Corelle dishes from Thanksgiving,

My bedroom floorplan and my sister’s costume for a school play.

 

An addition from a few years ago was the crossed out college shopping list from my oldest daughter’s trip to BYU.

One book from the early 90’s included this sketch of Santa.

Sometimes I stick things in there that are just plain odd, like this score sheet from a game Jordan and I played. Her score became the king, and mine was the queen. The game was played on March 15 and across the bottom it reads “Beware the ides of March”

Do I write this for posterity? Oh, I hope not. I don’t know. It is so full of my fears, inadequacies and complaints. But it also contains my faith, my testimony, and many musings on my gratitude to God. Often I get out my journal and write just to ‘process my thoughts’ and get things out of my system.

On the other hand, how wonderful it would be to have a hand written record of the day to day life of one of my great grandmothers.

I don’t know what will become of it. I am not a real writer. But I do feel that journal writing is very important for everyone. Everyone will benefit from keeping a journal, and it’s never too late to start.

I hope I will fill many more books to come!

-Lynnae