My last blog on Journals and a Search for Unrealized Dreams [Turbo-Charged Activity] kicked up some dust with several readers. Let me reassure you if you think you’re in the “This Doesn’t Apply to Me” category: it’s never too late to start a journal. A couple of people who responded with something like “Oh, if only I’d started a journal a while ago. I don’t think I even kept my diary from junior high” don’t have to feel any real regret. You can start a journal right now.
Trust me: it’s not too late. Grab a notebook or place some loose paper in a file folder. Now, see? You have a journal, waiting for you to share what’s on your heart or in your head on paper. Now, what’s the complaint? You don’t know how to start? One year, I started a Gratitude Journal, and every night, I wrote five things that I’d considered or experienced that day for which I was grateful. Start there! Write down five things—don’t trip up on whether they seem important or not—just list or describe five things for which you feel grateful today. People put suggestions for journal prompts online all the time. Just start!
In the blog post, I revealed that I wanted to sit quietly and thoughtfully and read back through my journals to discover unrealized dreams, like Oprah and her network dreams from 1992. I found my journals stored in two different places, so the search itself wasn’t uncomplicated, and once I was in the midst of reading, I became convinced that the greatest reward from this task was to take my time and savor this reading. For one thing, my voice sounds agitated and afraid in many of the entries, a voice of a much younger Me trying to separate her true spirit from the frenzy of mothering and career life and pressures from graduate school and troubled students and, in too many instances, unnecessary and unwelcome drama.
There are entries that express the joys of mothering bright and energetic children and of wonderful travel-adventures and peaceful holidays, and those are fantastic and truly valuable, too. I’m just particularly interested in finding what lies beneath the harried voice of a woman who’s often “dancing as fast as she can.” She lived the extremes of happiness and despair at the most frenzied pace that I can imagine. What does she aspire to do or be that’s been left undone?
All the best!
Doctor Mell
