On occasion, most often when I have to put real pants on and leave the house, I get asked if I’m still writing.
Some of you know I spent about 30 years in the Temecula Valley writing for two daily newspapers. Some of you even know what a daily newspaper is, or at least, used to be.
When asked, I usually answer I write a bit for this wonderful publication for my friend Linda Wunderlich and her daughter Tara.
“But other than that, not really,” I say. “Sometimes I write stuff down.”
“Oh, you’re journaling,” people tell me.
“No, I’m just writing stuff down,” I reply.
“No, your journaling and it’s very popular,” they say. “It’s supposed to be good for you.”
At my age sleep and fiber are good for me. But out of curiosity one morning, while writing stuff down, I searched “Journaling” on the Google Machine.
Sure enough, there were pages and pages on “Journaling” and how it was good for my mental and physical wellbeing, can help with depression and anxiety, will keep my aging brain sharp and heck, I don’t know, clear up acne.
There were websites with the best ways to begin Journaling which seemed to become popular at the beginning of the Pandemic.
I’m in my fifth year of Journaling which I began, purely by coincidence, in February 2020 when I retired and the Covid virus first came on the scene.
Most mornings I wake up early – blame the fiber – turn on the coffee maker, settle into the home office chair and open my laptop. After unsubscribing to a dozen emails, I find the document where I save the stuff that I’ve been writing stuff down, and being writing stuff down, err.. I mean Journaling.
Some days I’ll write two sentences, others two paragraphs. It rarely takes more than five or ten minutes. Some days I don’t write anything at all.
I do this with the expectation that no one is ever going to read any of this, except me.
I’ll go back and read what I wrote about going to five stores looking for toilet paper, or my thoughts watching events unfold on January 6th or I revisit our family struggle last year as we watched my father-in-law slowly slip away.
It’s not all bleak.
Recently I journaled of our joy learning a new grandchild is on the way, or the satisfaction of getting my spring garden planted.
So I suppose Journaling is good for me. Could it be good for you? You can find dozens of suggestions on how to get started.
My best advice is to just start writing stuff down.
