Four More Years

I’ve mentioned in one of my Favorite Things Friday posts, the journal that I write in every single day. It is a published journal called Building the Best You by Caroline Harper and each book contains two years of daily journals. I like it because the area to write in is so small, you can’t even write in full sentences. Basically, every day you answer the same six questions and the next year is right beside the previous year on the same page, so you can do a quick comparison of your answers. It takes all of three minutes to fill out, every night. Every three months or so, there are longer questions with more space to fill, but overall, it is very simple and quick to fill the journal out and at the very least, you have a quick recap of what you have been doing with your time and life. And by comparing the years, you can decide if you have made any progress in your life skills, or if you are at a standstill or even regressing. It’s a great tool.

I just finished filling out my third journal book at the end of July. So, I have consistently kept a journal for six years. This beats my past record of six consistent days of keeping a journal, by quite a lot. My past record was made when I was in the third grade and My Diary (literally) had a fancy little lock on it. I imagine that I stopped writing the journal when I lost the key to the lock.

When I realized a few years ago that I was actually committed to keeping a journal, I purchased a bunch of copies of Building the Best You, as they were on clearance at Barnes and Noble. When I went into my cabinet the other day, to start a new journal – my fourth one, I did a quick inventory of how many journals I had left. I figured I had enough journals to get me well into my sixties. But then I started getting nervous. The superstitious part of me started kicking in, in an intense way. My breath was quickening, and my heart was beating harder . . . . I knew what I had to do. I went to Amazon and I ordered two more books. I effectively added four more years to my life. Keeping a journal is powerful stuff.