stuff i think

in support of a good journaling habit...

Okay, once again I'm the last one on the bandwagon. My wife has a huge stack of journals from the fourteen years we've been married, and even a collection of them from the time before we were married. There was life before me?! I have always resisted journaling...Odd, because I love to write. I think it was the mechanics of it - I tend to think in flurries (some would say a fog). Words come fast and furious - much faster than I can write with a pen. Add to this my atrocious penmanship and it all makes for a very tiring journaling experience.

Kelsey can say "I think I remember a dream I had about that very thing...", rush to the journals, and pull up something that she thought about in 1985, written out in great detail. I have to close my eyes and say "Hmmm. 1985. I was listening to Van Halen....I was driving a burnt orange Chevy Citation...." But I'll never remember what I was thinking at that time. (A Chevy Citation? What was I thinking?

This Great Journal Resistance broke down slowly. Kelsey gave me a spiral bound journal as I left for Burning Man in 2002. I wrote down some very funny impressions en route. (2,200 miles nonstop is a guarantee for some funny things to happen. Hey look! The trailer fell off!") Still, I didn't really get in the swing of writing in it until earlier this year.

When we moved here, Kelsey gave me a gorgeous leather journal - rugged, grainy pages and a stitched leather binding. It looks particularly good with my Eddie Bauer water bottle. A Man's Journal. John Eldredge would be proud. I had this cockamamie idea that because the journal was so exquisite, I would only write particularly profound things in it. I would save my other journal for griping about stuff. You can guess what happened. In 3 months, I only wrote three or four pages, and even those pages' profundity were highly debatable.

Finally I broke down and just started writing. Gripes. Impressions. Dreams. Nightmares. Jealousies. Victories. Everything but my order at the drivethrough...And I have fallen in love with my journal. I guess it was just a matter of getting real with the idea. Now I find myself referring to it when preparing teaching - grabbing it knowing that "I heard something from the Lord on that scripture....". I can't wait until my stack of journals is as tall as Kelsey's.