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Prompted journal
I have enjoyed responding to journal prompts and will continue to do that.
Strength-training diary
That's on hold. I think I have incipient carpal tunnel, and that's my excuse for not doing much strength training, which, in turn, is my excuse for not doing much on my strength-training journal. But hey, I did my taxes, so that's a relief. Which is good for one's health.
/Excuses.
More ideas
I could make a list of all the issues I'm writing to my reps about. I could finish my holiday newsletter for 2024. And I could still do brief entries in Spanish.
There's a new monthly badge I'm liking (details later). One of the possible requirements is to do "extreme reading," where you read in different locations and take a selfie. If I found a related location for each book and took a picture, that would be an interesting kind of reading journal.
Nothing's grabbing me at the moment. I'll have an update next month.
Reading a diary
I have checked out David Sedaris's huge Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002 from the library. To help me decide whether to check it out, I read the Introduction, and it was fascinating. He described how he edited down his journals for this book, and how someone else could have made him sound like a whole different person by editing out different things.
But my favorite part is, "If nothing else, a diary teaches you what you're interested in. Perhaps at the beginning you restrict yourself to issues of social injustice or all the unfortunate people trapped beneath the rubble in Turkey... You keep the diary you feel you should be keeping, the one that, if discovered by your mother or college roommate, would leave them thinking, If only I was as civic-minded/bighearted/philosophical as Edward!
"After a year, you realize it takes time to rail against injustice, time you might better spend questioning fondue or describing those ferrets you couldn't afford... The point is to find out who you are and to be true to that person. Because so often you can't....
"What I prefer recording at the end--or, more recently, at the start--of my day are remarkable events I have observed (fistfights, accidents, a shopper arriving with a full cart of groceries in the express lane), bits of overheard conversation, and startling things people have told me. These people could be friends but just as easily barbers, strangers on a plane or cashiers." (He's tried to edit out the ones that turned out to be urban legends!)
And he also talks about the format he likes to use, summarizing, "This is what cavemen did before paragraphs were invented."
I have enjoyed responding to journal prompts and will continue to do that.
Strength-training diary
That's on hold. I think I have incipient carpal tunnel, and that's my excuse for not doing much strength training, which, in turn, is my excuse for not doing much on my strength-training journal. But hey, I did my taxes, so that's a relief. Which is good for one's health.
/Excuses.
More ideas
I could make a list of all the issues I'm writing to my reps about. I could finish my holiday newsletter for 2024. And I could still do brief entries in Spanish.
There's a new monthly badge I'm liking (details later). One of the possible requirements is to do "extreme reading," where you read in different locations and take a selfie. If I found a related location for each book and took a picture, that would be an interesting kind of reading journal.
Nothing's grabbing me at the moment. I'll have an update next month.
Reading a diary
I have checked out David Sedaris's huge Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002 from the library. To help me decide whether to check it out, I read the Introduction, and it was fascinating. He described how he edited down his journals for this book, and how someone else could have made him sound like a whole different person by editing out different things.
But my favorite part is, "If nothing else, a diary teaches you what you're interested in. Perhaps at the beginning you restrict yourself to issues of social injustice or all the unfortunate people trapped beneath the rubble in Turkey... You keep the diary you feel you should be keeping, the one that, if discovered by your mother or college roommate, would leave them thinking, If only I was as civic-minded/bighearted/philosophical as Edward!
"After a year, you realize it takes time to rail against injustice, time you might better spend questioning fondue or describing those ferrets you couldn't afford... The point is to find out who you are and to be true to that person. Because so often you can't....
"What I prefer recording at the end--or, more recently, at the start--of my day are remarkable events I have observed (fistfights, accidents, a shopper arriving with a full cart of groceries in the express lane), bits of overheard conversation, and startling things people have told me. These people could be friends but just as easily barbers, strangers on a plane or cashiers." (He's tried to edit out the ones that turned out to be urban legends!)
And he also talks about the format he likes to use, summarizing, "This is what cavemen did before paragraphs were invented."