DAY 81 - JOURNALING, it's the write stuff

A few of my actual journals, from this year alone.

If you're reading my blog, then you know I like to write. It’s a habit I started when I was very young. I started journaling back in elementary school, and for most of my life I have been a very avid journaler.

   When I was about age 12, I wrote my journal to my brother Mike – even though I never knew him. Writing my journal as if letters to him, helped me feel closer to him – and help me feel a little bit less alone.

   And I do think that is part of why I have always written in my journal – because I grew up kindof like an only child. Even though my parents had three children, none of us grew up together. From the age of 5, I was the only child at home (Fran had left for college) – and as a latch-key kid on those days that my mom worked, well – I had a lot of time alone. Although I read a ton, and had a lot of friends to play with, there was still a lot of time alone. So I wrote – a lot.

   I am quite certain that part of my writing/journaling I get from my father also. You would never have caught Dad without a pen and paper on him. He used to take a piece of paper and folded a special way – and each section meant something to him in his Newspaper Head: the Who, What, When, Where, Why, How of it all. Even though I don't have to fold paper in a special way, you also rarely find me without pen and paper on me. It's how I spend my free time. And there is a “security blanket” comfort that comes with having pen and paper always at hand.

   Certainly it's easier to tote a journal around being a girl – because I can always stick it in my purse. I always have a journal in my purse. Even with all of the traveling I have done this past year, and my dutiful effort to travel light as a road warrior – I still always had a journal and four or five pens on me. Always. Better than American Express – I just can't leave home without it.

   For me, journaling has become increasingly easier over the years – ever since Al Gore invented the Internet. (Ha ha.) With always having a computer at work, and now a SmartPhone on me – “virtual pen and paper” are always at hand, and I can print them off later at home. That way anywhere I am, as long as I have Internet access, I can write in my journal. Heck, I would write on parchment, banana leaves, even bubblegum wrappers if that's what it took. Putting pen to paper is just as much a part of me as breathing.

My shelf our journals, now over 6-feet long.

   Most of my journal is just me talking things out – kindof like talking to myself. It's how I think things through and work things out. So obviously, I have done a lot of journaling this past year. And through the past 49 years there have been some really tough times in my life, and I have written excessively during those times. It seems the older I get the more I write. When I was younger I probably averaged about a page a week. Nowadays I fill a 3-inch binder every single year. Sometimes even more than that.

   I think part of the reason is that Spencer W. Kimball was the Prophet when I was growing up, and he too was an avid journaler. He was always counseling the youth to keep a journal. And I distinctly remember a picture of him in his Prophet Office, with a shelf filled with hard bound journals behind him – very proudly displayed. That made a huge impression on me, and after I bought my first house – I got a bookshelf and put my journals on one of the shelves. And over the years that shelf has gotten fuller and fuller. In my current Den, I have a fabulous IKEA bookshelf – with 6-foot long shelves. This last year I not only finished that 6-feet of shelving with my journals, but it now overflows onto the shelf below. And I am nowhere close to slowing down – and never stopping.

From my earlier journal entry,
1979, I was 14-years-old.

   But it's not like I want anyone to read my journal or anything. Heaven forbid! In fact, I should add a line to my Will that states that my journals get buried with me. Except that I would need a bigger burial plot – much bigger.

   I write because I have to. Writing in my journal – heck, writing at all is as much a part of me as the hair on my head or the blood in my veins. It is just something that I have to do. And somehow, even with all of the time that I do find to write – it is still never enough time to get it all captured.

   Blogging and journaling or two very different things to me. My journals are very private, incredibly intimate. The deepest thoughts and darkest secrets of my heart. And the pieces of the lives of others that they have shared with me and the lessons I learned from them – both good and bad.

   Blogging, on the other hand, that's very public – and that is what it is intended for. But my journal, is as private and secret as it comes. It is my most intimate and private thoughts. It’s the stuff that I can’t share with another human soul – not with the men I married, not with a best girlfriend, sometimes I struggle to even put it onto paper to share it with myself.

   But there are things that shouldn’t be bottled up – things that tear you down and leave you feeling hollow. After my divorce, I journaled to figure out how to build my new future, I journaled to figure out what had happened, and to gain much needed perspective on why I was treated so cruelly when I had been nothing but loving and supportive. And as I put it all onto paper, as the pieces of the puzzle that is my life flowed from the pen, I gained tremendous insight.

   Personally, I am blessed with tremendous inspiration and very clear personal revelation when I am writing in my journal. Thoughts and understanding come to me through journaling that I simply cannot receive any other way.

   So grab a notebook and a pen, and sneak off to a corner somewhere. Heck, I’ll even share my Writing Corner with you.

DAY 64 - WRITERS ARE WEIRD

OK, now that I’m doing this Writing Challenge (NaNoWriMo) — I decided to reach out and connect with other writers. I went to a couple of events for Writers these past few days, and one of the things that is very apparent:  Writers are Weird.

   I guess that shouldn’t have really come as a surprise to me. My family is full of writers — and, yes, they are a bit “quirky”. They have unusual hobbies. They tend to have somewhat “tangent” ideas — and they are fiercely dedicated to their tangentness. But some of the writers I met these past few days are truly “weird”.

   One of the meetings was at The Chocolate — a yummilicious dessert store in Orem. First, kudos for location choice. And although a few of the people seemed fairly normal, there were a few that were… well, weird. One woman was particularly chatty — not that being social is a problem for me (since I’m rather social myself). But this woman could talk me under the table. And her chattiness was even more surprising because not only was she in charge, but all of us brought laptops and notebooks and wanted to write — something usually more easily accomplished in a more hushed, library-like atmosphere.

   The other meeting was at a place called Dragons Keep in Provo — apparently a Fantasy Gaming and Comic Book store. I’ve never set foot in this store before, and unless I find the need for 27-sided dice or really-expensive and scantily-clad Action Figures sometime in the future — well, I’m not likely to frequent it very often. There was a rather large turnout, pizza & pop, and LOTS of people who apparently do this NaNoWriMo thing every November. And an amazing number of these individuals write Science or Fantasy Fiction. There were a significant number of conversations about Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit — movies I haven’t even seen, which confession immediately put me well-outside of the Inner Circle in this group.

   Fortunately, I have a great friend that enjoys writing also — and we decided to just be our own little group. We like to hang out anyway. We both actually want to write, so a quiet place to do so is a priority. And we are both pretty normal women.

   Having a Writing Buddy is a great thing. Much like a Diet Buddy or an AA Sponsor, having someone that supports you and gives you encouragement is a great thing in life. It’s much of the reason we all get married. But sometimes you have a specific hobby that you need a buddy/mentor for — and that’s a great thing too. I have Buddies for different areas of my life because no one person likes all the same things that I do. And it’s nice to have different friends I can share different parts of my life with.

   So if you think I’m a bit weird, thank you. Maybe that means I will make a good writer someday.

DAY 62 - NaNoWriMo – no, that’s not a misspelling

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It happens every November, and the challenge is to write 50,000 words in the next 30-days. I decided to participate this year, and since today is November 1st – I am jumping in.

I’ve wanted to do this for the past few years, but there was always some excuse. I was too busy. It was too much to take on. Life just seemed too much “up in the air”. Not that my life is really any calmer this year than any other year, but that the challenge of “1667 words per day” doesn’t seem as daunting as it used to. Most of my blogposts are 500+ words (some even 800 words), and I’ve been able to handle that for the past 62 days.

And blogging for the past 62-days has really done a lot for me. It forces me to get out and do something every day that is Blogworthy – which is especially helpful on those days that I just want to pull the covers up over my head and make the world go away (and, yes, I still have more days like that than I should). Writing every day also makes me stick with it – I mean, once I got through the first 21-days, then the first 30-days… well, to write for all 83-days seems totally do-able. And it has helped me prove to myself that I can write – the quality of my writing is still to be determined, but as one who has always dreamed of being a writer, this blog at least has me writing. And with now over 12,000 hits on this blog so far (see 10,000 Hits), for the first time in my life I am finally brave enough to share what I’m writing – and, gratefully, getting wonderful and positive comments.

In my Den I have a 6-foot-long bookshelf, and one entire shelf contains all of my journals from throughout my life. I’ve been an avid journaler most of my life, and those Journals now not only fill an entire 6-foot expanse but they have started to overflow onto the shelf below also. I rarely leave the house without a Journal in my purse, or some form of pen and paper. [And I always keep pen and paper in my car.] Even sometimes just standing in a line at the bank or somewhere, I will use the email function on my phone to jot down mini-entries – sometimes not more than a simple note about somewhere or someone. But it’s better to have only a single paragraph on a topic than nothing at all.

My father always wanted to write the Great American Novel, and handed his novel off to me to complete. I have pages and pages of notes that he wrote, and— if I can decipher the hieroglyphics he called handwriting — someday I may work on it. Even a few of my cousins have written novels. Four-generations of my family has been into writing in some form or another. Roes are writers (and readers) – I guess it’s just in our blood.

So for the next month I will write an average of 1667 words each day – which will give me 50,000 words by the end of November. According to websites, that’s about 2-hours or so of writing each day. No editing. No proofreading. Just writing and writing and writing — and letting the ideas flow onto the page.

It may never become the Great American Novel, but for me that isn’t the point. I write because I love to write. I does something for me that I can’t get from anything else. It feeds a part of my soul.

And if, by chance, it does turn into the Great American Novel – I’m sure I’ll blog about that too.

DAY 30 - WHERE DID ALL THESE PEOPLE COME FROM?

Although I started this for myself, I’m surprised at how many people are reading my blog: over 3500 in the past month, and 8000+ ever. When I look at Facebook I’ll see a post that has maybe a dozen “Likes” and maybe a comment or two – and then go look at the Stats on my blog and see that over 200 people have read it.

   Don’t get me wrong – I am incredibly flattered. I started this 83-day Journey for myself, but between the Comments, Facebook Messages, and personal conversations I am learning that there are quite a few people out there that are silently reading it. And from a few of the messages I’ve received, it’s helping others too.

   As a kid, I used to press my ear against my bedroom wall – and early mornings and late nights I could hear the tap-tap-tap of my father typing in the Kitchen. Dad was always a writer. Born into a newspaper family, he grew up with ink in his blood – and watched his father and grandfather work at getting the paper out together every day. When he was age 23, Dad bought out his grandfather’s share of the Preston Citizen – and was the youngest newspaper owner in Idaho’s history (at least at the time). Even long after he sold (due to WWII), he continue to write – Red Cross, United Way, Kiwanis, and pretty much any organization he was involved in benefitted from his gift for writing. He was the editor of the Cal-Nev-Ha newspaper for Kiwanis for over 20 years. Even into his 80s, Dad worked on his Personal History – and a novel he’d always wanted to write, that he passed along to me to finish. And it’s literally in our blood, because among my uncles and cousins, there are at least a dozen of us that write – both personally and professionally. I guess it’s just what Roes do.

   And in today’s society, we are readers. We are Information Junkies. Even within Facebook, I think my newstream is filled with as many Shared Links as personally posted photos and updates. Nobody uses an encyclopedia anymore – we just Google it, and often end up on someone’s blog. Sometimes just for a random bit of information or instruction, sometimes we follow blogs of specific people we like or are interested in.

   We have become Internet Voyeurs. Without even leaving our house, we can be Peeping Toms, looking into the windows of people all over the country, all over the world. Through their blogs we sneak-a-peek through their curtains and see what it going on inside. And as someone who lives in a glass house, I have admittedly left the curtains wide open.

   Sometimes I write something that I expect to get read, like Divorce vs. Annulment – because it was something that I couldn’t find information about. Sometimes it’s something that I know is a bit of a “Hot Topic” like Women and the Priesthood  – which I want to express my opinion about. But sometimes it’s just my personal ramblings about my messy desk or playing the piano – and still they get read. And there is something about knowing that people are reading that pushes me to continue to write, to try to be funny or eloquent, to push myself as a writer more than I ever have.

   That’s really why I started blogging – because it pushes me beyond my own limits. I’ve been a rather faithful Journal Writer for many years. Many (if not most) of my journal entries never get finished – but I just stop when I run out of time. But with blogging, it has to be thought-out and complete. I write a rough draft, and I go back and edit it (usually a couple of times). I take some time to find a photo or quote (or two) that I think adds to my own words. It’s a finished and completed Writing – hopefully with a cherry on top.

   Because, in reality, it isn’t just a few hundred random words that I’m putting out there – it’s a part of me, maybe the deepest part of me. Writing is looking deep within, and finding some small piece of my soul to share with the world – and polishing it and shaping it. For most of my life, all of my writing just got shoved in a drawer or tucked on a shelf. But this blogging world has allowed me to put my heart out there. It’s scary – rather terrifying – to do, but also incredibly rewarding too.

   So I do it, every day, for a whole month now. Putting my heart on paper, and waiting – wondering what people will think. For the most part, I have no idea what people really think. These Internet Voyeurs stalk around silently, so I have no idea who they are or what they think. But I am grateful for the positive comments from friends, and for the reading by strangers too. And, because I have shared this piece of my soul with you, that somehow connects us – makes us friends. And more than the thousands of clicks on my blog, I’m grateful for the hundreds of new connections that I have out there in the world.

I will write until not a single word 

remains in my soul … 

until every story in my heart has been told … 

until my mind’s well of ideas is bone dry … 

and even then I will write on 

because writing is not just something I do 

but part of who I am.