My least successful stab at keeping a journal was in 1998. I’m going to call it an adventure because way back then I was trying something new, unusual, exciting and fun. My other reason for this is because yesterday and today the challenges are ‘journal’ and ‘adventure’ and I’m trying to make sense of my decision to combine the two. I do realize keeping a journal is not everyone’s idea of breathtaking adventure.
The Kiss by Francesco Hayez
Anyway, adventurous or not, I did it because Oprah told me to. She said everyone should write down three things they are grateful for every day. I had the perfect book to put it in too, something I purchased on a whim called “Love, A Book of Days.” It is full of beautiful art work and famous quotes with love as a recurring theme, with six or seven little blank numbered spaces on every other page, the perfect size for recording spurts of gratefulness.
My dedication to this endeavour lasted about fifteen weeks. However, the last four weeks probably shouldn’t count because all I was writing by then were three strange words a day – words like syzygy, fossiker and ozostomia. I suppose we can assume I was grateful for those words, but only up to a point, because suddenly I just stopped being grateful for anything at all and the rest of the pages are blank. Except of course for the painting reproductions and the blurbs about love by famous people. So it’s still a book worth keeping, despite being scribbled in.
Are you watching the Sochi Olympics this winter? The reason I ask is because in 1998 the Nagano Olympics were happening. I would not have remembered this if I hadn’t written that I was thankful for knowing the ice dancing judges were idiots and being grateful for Olympic hockey games and never having to actually watch any of them.
Other less historically significant things on my list included being grateful for –
1. Weekends and sleeping in
2. Clumping cat litter
3. Being able to recognize my boss’s insanity/cope with her mental instability (there are apparently many ways to say this)
4. How quickly one can make spaghetti
5. Phone calls that are for me/phone calls that are NOT for me
6. Medical terminology for transcriptionists
7. Selective memory
8. Bohemian Rhapsody
9. Chiropractors and not needing one
10. Shoelaces
11. Shopping lists, finding my shopping list while shopping, getting things that are not on my shopping list
12. Stat Holidays, even when they’re a joke.
I have no idea what that last one means. One day I wrote meditation, mediation, medication. And the boss is the one who’s nuts? Yeah.
Did you ever keep a journal? Are you going to burn it before you die?
Dancing in Columbia by Fernando Botero
Cin’s Feb Challenge – Day 20 Journal, Day 21 Adventure
Breathing Space 
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