THINGS I'VE LEARNED FROM MY JOURNALS

I first started keeping a journal in 1981.  I began by writing weekly, typewritten entries, but I soon realized that by the end of the week many of the interesting details of daily doings in a large family had drifted away, or all run together and lost their spontaneity.  

In April of 1982, I decided to keep a daily, handwritten journal.  I bought several blank page books covered in brightly printed fabric.  They were visually stimulating, and I figured they would keep me motivated.  They did, indeed, and I kept a daily journal continuously for the next nine years. Then for some reason I lapsed.  I didn't write regularly from 1991 through 1999.  During those years, however, I kept notes on a calendar and wrote an annual synopsis of important events at the end of each year.  Then in 2000 I bought an Ansel Adams day-planner, and started making daily entries again.  I have faithfully kept a daily journal since that time.

What have I learned from all this journal writing? 

 

1-Things that seemed routine or ho-hum at the time become vitally interesting 25 years down the road.  As I made daily entries,  I often thought such things as, "Who cares if Quinton, riding in the grocery cart, turned around while I wasn't looking,  grabbed the cottage cheese, removed the lid and dumped it out over all the other groceries?"  At the time it was just a very messy situation, now it is a hilarious memory!

2-Most of the crises and catastrophies that seemed so devastating at the time are no longer even relevant to my life.  "Time heals all wounds" is a truth.  Many of the seemingly overwhelming problems and issues just evaporated, often in a matter of only a few days or weeks.

3-Reading a journal entry from the past is like re-living a section of your life.  Its possible to retain a memory of an event without a journal, but writing it down brings it back with its full scope of emotions.

4-I've learned not to leave out the bad stuff.  Its a natural tendency to want only to write about the happy, smiley-face moments, but this is not real.  The bad stuff happens, and to have an accurate account of your life, it must be included.  As I said earlier, it will surprise you how irrelevant these shadowy moments in your life become as time erases, or at least diminishes them.

5-Several of my ancestors kept journals that are valuable to me beyond measure.  Durant Litchfield, my great, great grandfather kept a day by day account of his experiences as a soldier in the Civil War.  My grandmother, Loana Pickering Griffiths, wrote a detailed account of her childhood in the LDS colony in Alberta, Canada.  I love and cherish these writings.

I wonder if my ancestors ever wondered if anyone would really be interested in what they wrote.  I'm glad Grandfather Litchfield didn't say, "I don't think I'll bother to write anything today. Who cares about the boring, daily activities in camp.  Who cares that President Abraham Lincoln visited our company this week."  I'm glad my Grandmother Griffiths thought it worthwhile to write that her father took her and her sisters to school on horseback on days when the sub-zero temperatures of a Canadian winter prevented them from walking, but that on one occasion when they arrived at the school, the doors were frozen shut and they had to turn around and go back home.  

Great stories, all!  Aaron confiscating Ben's shoes is a great story, as is the cottage cheese incident, the Blue Donkey incident,  the dead mice dressed in doll's clothes incident, the "Nephi and the brass plates of Laban" re-enactment that frightened Mia out of her wits, and every other fun, terrifying, delightful, miserable or just plain ho-hum thing that happens in the course of the day. 

Write it down.  Someone, sometime, is going to just love it!