Journaling

Once upon a time I kept a diary.

The diary looked something like this one:

Inside the diary there were only a couple of lines for each day.

When I remembered to write I wrote brilliant things in terrible handwriting. 

Things like, "Today was great!"
I guess I thought I would remember that day forever.

As I grew older and learned more about writing in a journal I wrote down a few more thoughts, feelings and day to day activities.

I have quite a few of these beautiful books:

I bought them because they were cheap and gave me a lot of room to write in.  I was very diligent in my journal writing for a long time.

Even after I married and started having children I kept my own journal as well as a journal for each new baby.  The baby's journal was started as soon as I found out I was pregnant and I did my best to document the pregnancy and the child's life until they could write for themselves.  Apparently some of my children are more intelligent than others because my last two children's journal stops about the time they turned one.

Then I went through a phase where my planner was my journal.  My planner was suppose to make my life easier and simpler as it was a place to keep everything together but it wasn't as private and so I wrote less and less.  Writing less might also have something to do with chasing after four children.

When I purchased my first laptop I started writing my journal on it.  I can type at least 30 times faster than I can write in longhand and I can fix mistakes without having to scratch things out.  I pushed myself to be consistent but consistency has never been one of my stronger traits.

Then I discovered blogging.  

Blogging is a lot like journaling but honestly I think it is more like writing a form letter to lots of friends; some of the friends you know and some you don't.  I love the experience of blogging but it is just not the same as a journal.

Today one of the girls found her baby journal.  

It's in one of these unassuming books.

She read the words with great interest and then asked me if I remembered something I had written down.  I honestly don't remember the experience at all.  I'm grateful I wrote the events down when they happened. This experience has reminded me just how precious a journal can be and that it's time for some every-day writing.  Or maybe every-other day.  Well, at least once a week!