Forgive Yourself the Whining
Take a deep breath and read your past journals
I ended 2019 with an activity I’ve long procrastinated over. The fun part of the activity involved parking myself in a comfy chair with my feet up and a cup of coffee. The not so fun part involved reading two-and-a-half years worth of my journals.
For me that equates to 6 journals all written in my less than neat cursive (yes, I still write in cursive), with multi-colored pens and lots of doodles. And just to add discombobulation, most of the journals were started from the back as well as the front.
Why did I feel compelled to spend the last week of the decade immersed in the past?
I felt the need to unearth the infinite wisdom I was certain they would contain. Heck, there must be something of value in those 6 filled up journals.
I have a tendency to treat my journals like I treat my grocery lists — write it out and never look at it again. With grocery lists the act of writing it is usually enough to lodge the key things in my memory. That and the key items, IPA, wine, eggs, butter, Wickles Pickles and popcorn are pretty much the same week to week.
Not so much with my journals.
It took a good 7 days and an abundance of caffeine to get through them. And I was right, at least partially. They were…
