Everyone has a story to tell. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never left the farm or if you’re a world class celebrity. The life you have led is filled with events and insights to which others in this world may strongly relate and from which they can also learn–not only about you, but more importantly about themselves.
I have been keeping a diary for years. There are so many of them stacked in my cabinets now that by the time I am 100, and I fully intend to be, I will need my own library to store them. Will anyone ever want to take the time to read them–even my nearest and dearest? Maybe not. But that is not the primary purpose, which is to communicate with myself about what is going on in my life and how it is being handled within my thoughts and feelings. It is also a way to keep a record, a way of providing proof of my existence. Ultimately, it’s a comforting feeling to know that the past thirty-plus years of my life are at my immediate disposal at the mere flip of a page.
A bonus of this process is the realization that your mind is not the best storehouse of fact. Memories have a way of creating their own spin on events. Your journal has the capacity to keep you honest.
Writing thoughts on paper is a very intimate and private process. Assigning them to the blogosphere is an entirely different affair. It’s all I have to say for now. The rest of today’s thoughts go in my paper-bound diary.
