A Lag in My Journal

April 28, 2009

Since I was about fourteen years old, I have written in a journal or notebook or diary regularly. At times, the writing has been sparse, and at times, it's been uninspired. But writing about my life has always been something that grounds me and gives me a record I can refer to after time has passed.

I've always been very grateful for my journals, which are numerous after twenty-six years, if I've done my math correctly.

Lately, I have not been devoting much time to writing in my journal. I find my time and motivation captured by other pursuits, sometimes fiction, sometimes housework, frequently scrapbooking. The days are passing, and the details of those days are not being recorded, except in email messages and Facebook postings.

Neither of which are the same as an hour with blank pages and pen in hand or a brand new Pages file on my Mac.

Today would have been the perfect day for journaling. Rain this morning, cool and cloudy all day. I did other things as so often happens. Scrapbooking 2008 is an important goal of mine, and I'm making great progress. Not all the pages are great, but getting the pictures and memorieso n pages is a huge accomplishment for me. That I'm enjoying it makes the progress even better.

April is almost over. It's hard to believe. May will be a busy month. LOAD 2009, the May version, begins on May 1st, and I've committed to a page a day for that project. Thirty-one pages in one month is going to be a bit of creativity gauntlet, but I'm totally up to it, and I'm anticipating the delicious high of maintaining that level of creative inspiration for an entire month.

All kinds of other things going on in May, too. The Women's Show and Mega Meet. A guest from out of town. Continuing to work on my writing. An email project with Eric Maisel I'll elaborate on further in another post.

I don't want to let the days of my life go by without some kind of record. Human memory tends to be a little selective, sometimes faulty. These memories, the everyday events of being human, are precious. Even the mundane things need to be written down, honored. Remembered. That's why I scrapbook in the first place. That's why I need to do better at not letting my journal lag.

At least not so much.