“What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.” ~Walter Scott
I can agree with Mr. Scott on that. I’ve made good use of several diaries when working on this or that book. But keeping a diary can be good in more ways than that. Years ago, while I was sitting with my mother during her last illness, I saw a television program where a doctor asked the audience what could make a person live longer.
The audience had several choices that all turned out to be true. I don’t remember any of them. So, we can guess about some of them. Exercising? Healthy diets? Having friends? Faith in the Lord? A loving church family? I wouldn’t remember the one I’m sharing with you in this post if I hadn’t gone back into my archives to pull up an old post to share with you again after lots of editing.
I can understand why this one caught my interest then and again now. When I watched the program and first wrote about it I had to wonder if I might be gifted with a few extra years of life if journal writing helps.
I’ve been writing in a journal since I was a teen. Now I have been writing in this on-line journal a couple of times a week since January 2008. That is sixteen years, and this post is number 1,926. Wow! If I’d put all those words into a manuscript I would have written a lot more books. But words in journals don’t make books. They are thoughts and feelings and things to share in 500 to 800 or so words. They are words spilled out as you think. They don’t necessarily join up with the last words you spilled out in a post. Each post can be its own individual story. For books, I have to come up with different words that tie together beginning to end to tell a story.
Anyway, for that old post in 2012, I pulled out my old journal to see what I might find. Yes, of course I still have it. A journal keeper can’t throw away handwritten words! So here’s a line from one of my first journal entries. “This is my fifteenth summer & so far it hasn’t been much.”
Doesn’t that sound like a teenage thought for a country girl? But somehow for years I’ve found something to write about even if it wasn’t much. According to that show I watched those years ago, whether it was much or not, I was doing something healthy when I took pen in hand and started writing to myself.
Here’s another bit I dipped into the old journal and found that made me smile. “When (and if) I get married, I’m going to keep my house where spring cleaning won’t be necessary.” It must have been spring cleaning time at my house. Mom did that every year. We even dragged the old springs that weren’t boxed up back in the day out into the yard to dust every spring. I hated that chore.
Anyway, I actually probably believed that part about keeping my house so clean when I was writing those words. Some goal, huh? And one that I conveniently forgot for all these years. Of course, I forgot to spring clean too. Spring zooms by so fast I don’t have time to get out the brooms and mops. I’m too busy writing in my journal.
That one made me smile but some of those early entries made me cringe when I read them. I was so very young. The doctors didn’t say reading what you wrote years ago in a journal makes you live longer. LOL. So maybe it’s better to write and then forget about what you’ve written the way I did about that keeping my house spic and span.
Over the years, I’m sure I’ve written a million or so words – to myself. It’s a great way to let off steam. A journal is a good place to whine and complain without casting a pall over anybody else’s world. But it’s also a good place to rejoice and celebrate and remember. I am happy to know it might give me a few extra years if I fill up journals (or write these posts) whether with important words or not.
Here’s another entry made after I did get married. Wasn’t much “if” to that after all. “No, I have nothing extremely important to tell you, but sometimes it’s more fun to just begin writing with no special thought.”
Here’s a quote from John Irving that I liked enough to share back in 2012 and like enough to share again.
When I was still in prep school – 14, 15 – I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things. ~John Irving
I like Irving’s thought of doing life drawing. Whether I did that or not, I always imagined I was writing to someone when I wrote in my journals. And now I am writing this to share with you reading friends here. It could be you are helping me add on some of those extra years. Thank you.
Have you ever kept a journal?