the one thing i do right.

if there is one commandment that i can say, with confidence, i follow pretty perfectly, it would be journal writing. it is something that i have been known for my whole life. every gift giving occasion i know that a friend or family member will present a new journal to me. and i go through them quickly- so it has always been appreciated. in my purse alone, i always have 3 moleskines. my daily planner, one full of lists and the last is full of words that i like. nerdy? totally. but if i feel the need to just carry those around with me at all times, imagine how much i have to write at the end of every day in a personal journal.

this brings me to telling one of the most tragic material losses of my life. perhaps because it was much more than just a bunch of leather notebooks.

last summer i moved from the apartment upstairs to the one that i am in now. instead of packing, i just made a million trips back and forth with things until i was finished. before i officially moved out, i left 3 boxes and my favorite vera bradley duffle bag upstairs. when i went back the next day to gather those things, i was informed that they had been taken by the cleaning service to be thrown out. i frantically called everyone i could but to no avail. i was unable to retrieve my belongings. the three boxes had winter clothes and shoes in them...i was a bit broken over losing my hunter wellies, my anthro mary janes and some of my favorite jeans and sweaters...but worse: in the vera bradley were about 13 journals. all of the journals that i had kept since i had left home, 5 years ago. just thinking about that makes me ill. generally i do not treat my journals as scrapbooks- full of pictures or memoirs, but if there are a few very special things, i will tuck them in there. so... i lost a lot of those few very special things. along with my oeuvre of journal entries about the most formative years of my life.  during those years i went through the darkest tragedies i couldn't have even imagined, but i also learned and grew from them. i learned so much and that was my place to record all of those experiences, both for myself and for my posterity (well... i am sure my posterity has benefited from this loss...they don't need to know everything...).

since then, i have of course continued my journal writing (and reconsidered how much i really need to spend on shoes and jeans...). but i have also since gotten a different, more time consuming job, become more serious about certain hobbies and returned to school. thus time is more limited. so i have recently begun keeping my journal on my computer (backed up a bagillion times and printed out at the end of every week) so that i could be a bit more efficient. i never liked typing my entries because i felt that something very personal was lost. the perfect punctuation, grammar and spelling aren't exactly realistic of me either. but it has allowed me to write epic entries in a much more timely fashion and i suppose it does still have the same effect. 

president kimball (of course i reference him again) was renowned for his passion for personal journal keeping.  these are some quotes from him on the subject:

"your story should be written while it is fresh and while the true details are available. do not suppose life changes so much that your experiences will not be interesting to your posterity. experiences of work, relations with people and an awareness of the rightness and wrongness of actions will always be relevant. your journal, like most others, will speak of problems old as the world and how you dealt with them."
"begin today! and write your goings and your comings, your deeper thoughts, your achievement, and your failures, your associations and your triumphs, your impressions and your testimonies. we hope you will do this, for this is what the lord has commanded, and those who keep a personal journal are more likely to keep the lord in remembrance in their daily lives"

some of the most sacred moments that i have experienced have been when prayerfully writing in my journal. i have had some of the greatest realizations come to me through pen and paper. whether it be direction as to what i should do, remembering all the amazing gifts the Lord has given me, or feeling His comfort as write about the more painful parts of my life. i am always reminded of His love for me as i evaluate and write about my daily life. and like president kimball said, write about everything. some of my entries are absolutely nonsensical. sometimes they are downright angry. some are purely absurd about love and marriage and kissing and stuff. others are just an update on what i have been up to and the random thoughts that came to my head throughout the day (like i said...long entries). but it is way for me to remember to take a moment to look at things a little more objectively and to be a little more grateful for what i do have.
if you don't keep a personal journal now, start. even if it is just a notepad of lists or thoughts. or letters to yourself. or whatever. just start and don't ever stop.