I don’t know about you, but scattered around my place are the start of at least 10 different journal efforts. At best, I have one journal that’s 3/4 complete and if you look at the dates, the entries come about every 3 or 4 months, unless i’m in total angst, then maybe every 3 or 4 days…the silence. I love the notion of keeping a journal, of being able to go back and see what I was up to (although admittedly, I’m not even sure when I would do that), but the commitment seems to go against my very nature.
I was recently reading O magazine, which I love almost as much as I love Real Simple and there was an article about keeping a 5 point memoir. It was fascinating, the author wrote 5 points about her day each day. It was short, concise, forced her to pick the most memorable/important moments, but also provided the experience of recording the days ups/downs and everything in between. 5 point memoir…challenge accepted! I created myself a private online blog to capture my own 5 point memoir and so far – so good. Granted, it’s only been about a week, but she was right. It keeps me on point and it takes no time at all. I admit, some days I struggle to find 5 interesting things, okay, most days I struggle to find 5 interesting things, but there was at least one day when I really had to prioritize what I wanted to capture. I don’t yet know if I’ll be able to keep this up (I’ll keep you posted) or if I’ll ever really go back and read these things, but I like to believe that perhaps I’ve found a way to reconcile my desire to journal with my inability to provide a bunch of time to my many rants and my general large number of thoughts. Most importantly, I thought this was a great way for YOU to record your thoughts and what happens each day. If you have kids, are getting married, divorced, starting a new relationship, whatever or nothing much at all, what a fantastic and concise way to revisit the experience later in life when it’s time to remember all of the lessons you learn through these experiences and through the very act of waking up each morning and going about your day. Plus, you just never know when you’re going to become super famous and need to publish these gems as an official memoir!
Happy Writing and PLEASE let me know how it works for you…
Pretty Da** Useful 