KEEPING A JOURNAL

When I was a teenager I attempted to keep a diary just for fun. Over the years I attempted to keep thoughts wrote in journals or notebooks. I often would let long gaps of time go by without writing anything. The older I got, I come to realize how important it was to write things down. When someone would ask me when a certain event had happened in my life or that of my family I couldn't recall the date. Special dates often left my memory.

Keeping notes on daily events can help us recall things having to do with all sorts of events. Maybe someone will ask you when was the storm of the century that dumped 5 foot of snow across the Northern United States. Some things never leave our memory but had I not wrote down March 13, 1993 I wonder if I could have recalled the date. We all know about Sept. 11, 2001 but could we recall our exact feelings about it as it was happening if we didn't take time to write it down. Some memories are unbearable. But the more we recall on paper the less stress we put on our minds. And if we need to refer back to that particular point of time we know where to look. I have had more unhappy memories happen in my life than I care to remember but I don't ever want to forget the effect they had on my life. I certainly never want to forget my happy memories or the people involved in making that happen. Sometimes the two are so fused together we can't forget either one.

Journals became very popular a few years ago. Today most any variety store carries them in all shapes, colors, and sizes. They make excellent gift ideas for most any occasion. The smaller ones can be good for keeping separate records.  I keep a small one to write about my cats.  I started it when I first brought them home as kittens. 

I keep notes about my job in a 2 year planner and write down vacation days, sick days, storm days and such.  It's a good place to keep track of certain things that happened at work that day as well.  Maybe there was a maintenance issue and a repair needed to be done.  By writing it down we'll have our own personal record as to when it may be an issue again.  Journals can be well worth keeping if only to keep records of things.  Our homes, our vehicles, our health, our family's health, our pet's health and our finances can all have records kept in one kind of journal or another.

A calendar hanging on the wall can be a source of journal writing.  Birthdays, anniversaries, and other events can be jotted down in that little square by a certain day.  I write appointments right on the face of the calender.  It doesn't require much space to write a time and place down.

A journal can also be started right on your computer and saved to your documents where you can keep adding to it and refer back to it when ever your working at your desk.

I once kept a journal on a word processor which was stored on a floppy disk.  This worked well for awhile until the word processor became obsolete.

I like to read my old journals I wrote years ago.  Things I jotted down in a notebook or pieces of poetry I tried to write but never finished.  It's a good way of remembering the good old days.  

I have an old notebook my grandmother wrote a few thoughts in, I wish she had wrote more.  I don't recall my parents or grandparents keeping a journal.  If they did I never got a chance to read them.  These loved ones have passed on now.  I'm blessed to have good memories of them as well as other family members.  A journal would have been a good source of keeping our family history alive one person at a time.