Tags
blogging101, Creative Writing, Faith and Writing, Journaling, Memories & Reflections, Quotes, Writing 101, Writing Prompts
The new year isn’t even a week old and I’m struggling with changing the way I’ve always done things. I felt so strongly toward the end of the year that it was time for a change in my regimented life. For years I’ve been faithful to journaling with three journals.
1 — Because the Journey Matters: a daily journal where I’ve kept track of what we did any given day, doctors’ appointments, birthdays, etc.
2 — The Saturday Morning Kitchen Khronicles: a weekly journal where I kept track not only of mine and Drolley’s comings and goings, but the whole family’s as well. It included colored pictures from travel, etc.
3 — Moodlings: a strictly personal journal where I basically took my emotional temperature every morning.
Moodlings was the first journal to fall away last year. Working with the blog made me happy and I found I was not NEEDING to vent in that journal as much. So I stopped being faithful to it the end of 2014.
Khronicles came to a screeching halt last March or so. I’m not sure why except that we always seemed to be gone on Saturday mornings for some reason and no other time felt right to do it! Dumb reason to quit, eh? I could have changed the name to Weekday Mornings Kitchen Khronicle. But it was the whole ritual of working on it on Saturday mornings that was satisfying to my soul. So I stopped that one, too.
I kept up with Journey through the end of 2015, but I was falling behind constantly and having to catch up. That was making me ornery and guilty by turns and had long since stopped being fun.
So here I am at the first of 2016 feeling — after all the work I’ve done in my life this year — that I need a change. And the fact is, it’s scaring the tar right out of me. I’ve been thinking about it since New Year’s Day when I did NONE of them. I kept thinking about the quote by Frederick Douglass for yesterday from the Daily Calm book I bought:
If there is no struggle,
there is no progress.
`
Something had happened yesterday to make me wonder if I NEEDED to be struggling a little bit more with changes in my life. Then last night we watched the season premiere of Downtown Abbey (HUGE fan!) and Drollery and I talked about the changes Britain was going through just prior to the war and the great depression. And it seemed to be a message to me that there IS no growth without struggle.
Are my journals an addiction? I honestly don’t know. Do they keep me mired in the past and so afraid of the future that I’m having trouble living in the present? Don’t know the answer to that, either. What I DO know is that I have a difficult time staying anchored in the here and now, even though those journals were to help me externalize my feelings and thoughts so I could do just that. Something isn’t working the same way for me any more.
This morning’s quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. seems to be pushing me in that directions as well:
Faith is taking the first step
even when you don’t see
the whole staircase.
`
So even though I’m way out of my comfort zone not using the journals to lean on, I going to keep my hands off them for the time being at least. If I need to I can always pick up Moodlings and have a go at it. I will miss the Khronicle as is DOES follow my kids and grandkids, too, and I’m just conceited enough to think they might be important to them some day. (rolls eyes…) Journey I have replaced with a small calendar to keep here at my laptop. Gonna try plain old notes!
I feel like it’s kind of ridiculous that I should be so upset by all this, but I am. It will be VERY interesting to see how I handle it all. To that end, if I go AWOL you’ll know I lost it! 😮 Send out the posse!!!
`
* * * * *
THE DAILY POST Jan 4, 2016
DAILY PROMPT: Happy Endings
Tell us about something you’ve tried to quit. Did you go cold turkey, or for gradual change? Did it stick?
`
Picture Credits:
Deepak Chopra — midlifemommusings.com
small changes — liveyourlegend.net
Impromptu Promptlings 
Pingback: Monday Morning Wisdom #37 | ARHtistic License
I’ve done my fair share of journaling over the years. Decades ago, it was only when I’d go on retreat, and I’d keep a journal then. I later, after I got married, began keeping a daily journal, because I wanted to remember specific events, that I knew I’d forget the next day. Those were on my PC, and then online journals, and I stopped doing that when I got tired of seeing that there was nothing I had not said from the day before, and the day before that. They were all the same.
Finally, when we move in here in 2014, I began to video journal. THAT was interesting. I stopped, only because, there wasn’t enough time in the day, once I began blogging, and my addiction to MSM became bigger than life.
I did one the other day, and it’s so much easier to video journal than to write. My writing gets so sloppy that I don’t often know what I’ve written.
Perhaps a different medium would help? Audio tape? video journal? that kind of thing is so very different. It also forced me to look at myself. That is a very important thing.
Change may be as simple as keeping one journal handy throughout the month, and when the need arises, sit and do it. Spread it out. Make them seasonal, if need be.
Talking things out – as we’ve found out – with another often works wonders for getting to the bottom of what’s on our minds. We’re not only getting it out into the Universe, but we’re also getting feedback.
One last thought on why it is hard to let go of something, is that there is a sense of security in the routine. BUT, within the last year, you’ve found – added – a new routine. Perhaps you’ve already made the change, and it’s just a matter of seeing that so much of what you might have put in the journal is right here, already.
Still, you’re at a fork in the road, and that’s often a very good place to be. Both roads will offer you something. It may simply be just two different ways of getting to the destination you have in mind.
{{{Calen}}}
LikeLiked by 1 person
OR, it may just depend on where the wheel has stopped spinning and which part of me is going to line up with this new path! See! That’s what I was talking about the other day. MAYBE we ALL live on a giant spinning dial and someone is playing a game with us!!! Lordy! Sort of like in the BOOK “Under the Dome!”
LikeLiked by 1 person
That is on my to be read list.
It also reminds me of that ABBA song, “The Winner Takes It All.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
It was an ok book. Very long and totally different than the tv series
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe the issue is not journaling so much as it’s the type of journals you’re keeping. You may get some ideas for other types here: https://timgatewood.wordpress.com/2015/09/30/an-idea-bank-for-writers/
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a really great post, Tim! You got a lot of mileage out of that 101 assignment! Thanks for sending the link. I hope others stop by and read it.
LikeLike
For me, change is difficult. It is easier to stay with the familiar, even if feels like it doesn’t fit anymore. When things don’t feel right anymore, that’s hard. Change is hard too, so I say to myself – do whatever moves you forward.
Peace
Mary
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s really good advice, Mary. I’ll have to keep that in mind!
LikeLike
No too sure you really should know, it might put you off him.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You can tell me unless it’s really, really gross! 😮
LikeLiked by 1 person
It is really not very nice. I’ll sort out all the details for you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The only journal I’ve ever really done was my Spark blog and that fell by the wayside a while ago. I do have Freeing My Muse but that is mostly for my writing.
I don’t know if agree with the idea that you have to struggle to make progress. I believe that progress can happen through the chooses we make as we go along with our lives. It’s true that struggling can bring about progress, but so can a lot of other things.
Your blogging is your journal now.
Luv Ya!
LikeLiked by 2 people
I would say it’s become more of an obsession! 😮
LikeLike
I wish we could just sit down and have coffee together. If a huge amount of money lands in my lap, I’m going to jumpon a plain to Utah, and email you from the airport. You’ll have no choice but to pick me up and take me back to your place, and then recommend a good hotel where I can stay before I jump on the flight home the next day. I may even make it a regular thing…
Three journals! Are you crazy? I wrote a journal when I was a child, but when I reached fifteen I had to stop, because I was so embarassed about the things I’d written a couple of years before, and I didn’t want to spend my life with constant reminders of my silly, romantic scribblings.
But seriously, I respect anyone who shows so much dedication to recording their everyday life. After I stopped the journal I wrote every kind of fiction and poetry imaginable. Fortunately I lost most of it along the way – I prefer not to have reminders of my childish hand. Much better to remember climbing trees and playing Robin Hood and Little John on a five-bar gate.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Did I really write “jumpon a plain”? Surely not…
LikeLiked by 1 person
LOL! LMBO! There’s no bloody way I’d let you stay at hotel, Missy! You’d just have to deal with my crappy household skills! I do promise the toity would be clean, however… 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m packing now. See you in eighteen hours. Do you mind if I bring my sister and her partner, my two daughters and their five children, two of my neices, and one of my nephews? They won’t be any trouble as long as you keep then]m on a leash in the garden, and feed them. My sister only seems to eat lentils these days, so she doesn’t cost much, and one of my grandsons likes pizza. I’ll bring a list of food you have to get.
You and me can go stay in that hotel…
LikeLiked by 1 person
You gotta deal! LOL ❤
LikeLike
I keep my daily Diary of all the exciting things that I do during the day, you know Cheryl washing and Ironing – seriously I just put the usual old boring things like going to the Doctors and the extra things wrong they find! Then I keep my Journal and in that I write my deep thoughts, don’t care if anyone reads it. I could not go a day without writing in these two things – bad luck I tell myself, that’s the Irish again in me. “Downton Abbey” finished here at Christmas. I don’t look at it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t care who reads mine either. Drollery can go through it any time he wants. There’s not a thing in there I haven’t already either told him or argued with him about! 😀 I LOVE Downtown Abbey. I was born in the wrong country and the wrong period of time. Does that make us at cross purposes now? Oh dear! 😮
LikeLiked by 1 person
No, of course not, it is good that we have different opinions from time to time. I went off the idea of “Downton Abbey” when I found out what the actor (can’t remember his name) who plays Lord Grantham did in real life, he did all he could to stop the Press here printing it. I do not look at much tv now lots of rubbish on. I do like though “Law and Order” yours not ours (ours which is rubbish), Jayne Mansfield’s Daughter is good in it. Re Journals etc, Jonathan has always said he would never want to read mine, David said he would!
LikeLiked by 1 person
What did Hugh Bonneville do?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Aha – now I’ve always wondered why I DON’T keep a journal of any kind. I always thought I should but have felt a tad embarrassed at the thought of anyone reading it once I’m gone.
I don’t feel that way about blogging though – and I have to admit that I don’t understand why that is. After all my little ramblings are there for anyone to see and I’m totally happy about it. I must just be plain weird 😅
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s a conundrum, isn’t it, Ruth… Perhaps we’re just more careful about what we put on here? But I fancy that my blogs are about the same as my journals for the most part. Not a lot of deep, dark things going on in those spiral notebooks! 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great post. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, hon. Your She Let Go hit pretty close to home today…
LikeLike
What would have done me in with that schedule is all the different, separate journals you had to keep track of. I have a few blogging friends who have 4 or more blogs. They generally seem to report the same (understandable) feelings of overwhelm, inability to keep up, and letting one or more them fall by the wayside. I’m curious what leads people to start so many different blogs.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I had two before this one. One is a private journal I was using to track my daily progress and feelings when I was writing Glencara’s Bane. I still add to that now and then when I work on editing. The other one is private, by invitation only. I don’t use it anymore though I still have it in case I ever want anything off there. I just finally got brave enough to put my feelings out there in public. I couldn’t have handled more than that, though.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I feel conflicted about journaling too. I think it can sometimes get pretty obsessive, like writing down every minor event is important. But I’ve regretted going for a few years without a journal of any kind…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking, too. I may just have to settle on one. Glad to hear someone else struggle with this.
LikeLike
I ‘fell’ away from journaling as well…and I did feel guilty at first…but then I realized that the reason was, I just didn’t ‘need’ it as much as I did in the past. I’m writing far more here now, and for all intent and purposes, it’s enough. Me thinks you’ve gotta just roll with it. Stop thinking so much…..😜 ok, you can smack me now!!!! Xoxo
LikeLiked by 4 people
Wanting to smack someone was what got me all balled up in a knot yesterday! I’m not a smacker, but I’ll tell ya what, I wanted to deck this guy! 😡 But that’s what made me wonder if it was NOT a good thing that I had left the journals behind. I guess only time will tell, eh? And you’re probably right. I think I do examine myself WAY too much… Been thinking a lot about that, too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m not a slacker either…but can relate…all I can say is thank goodness the holiday is over!!! I find Over analyzing and over thinking to be hazardous to my mental health!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
(I think mine has been hazardous to Plato’s healthy… 😦 )
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh nooooo!! lol
LikeLiked by 1 person