Friday, September 7, 2012

One useful tool a writer has is to maintain a daily journal.  Why?  Because it helps one organize their thoughts.  Gives them a time and space were they can write completely uncensored without having to worry about trivialities such as proper grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.  Their only concern is to jot down thoughts, emotions and doings.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been slammed, trying to pack my belongings, navigate between my old house and new one (a one-way distance of 110 miles) and do the hundred and one little tasks associated with moving.  As such, I was pulling seventeen to twenty-hour days.  By the time each day would wind down, I’d promise myself that I’d get caught up on my journal entries…tomorrow.  But then tomorrow would come, a non-stop, busy, blur of a day that matched the previous one.  Before I knew it, two weeks had passed without my journaling a single word!

I began keeping a diary when I was five in a journal that my older sister gave me.  Over the years, I’ve taken brief respites from faithfully entering in my diaries.  But for the past good number of years, I’ve never fallen more than a few days behind—always sure to catch up as soon as I got the chance.

So when I realized that I’d failed to make a single journal entry in two weeks—two rather significant weeks—I was overwhelmed with if I’d be able to recall all I’d done, felt and thought over that spell.

Sitting down with my journal and pen this evening, I felt encouraged, armed with daily notes of to-do items I’d kept from the period of time in question.  These would help jog my memory. 

Most days, I write one to three handwritten pages to account for the events of each day.  Even though I had to go back so far, I was able to summon up enough memories to still write that amount, for which I was grateful. 

I studiously held to my task for an hour and a half before my brain needed a rest….  By that time, I’d narrowed the gap so I was only one week behind with my journal entries. 

Yay!

So tomorrow, when I’m fresh and my brain has rested, I’ll resume entering my emotions, doings and events of the past two weeks into the pages of my journals.  Why am I determined to follow through with this?  Because I know that doing so will help strengthen my writing and recall skills.  In addition, the pages I generate will provide a treasure chest of writing fodder for the future.