My Journals

This is from a daily writing exercise, One  Thousand words a day. This article is 1,011 words.

Recently I found all my journals, when I was looking for something. They were in the upstairs hall closet on a shelf behind our clothes. We don’t have closets in our rooms, only one at the top of the stairs and one underneath the stairs. So all three of us share one narrow closet for our clothes and one closet for our winter coats, and extras, under the stairs. It is interesting because it is the first house I have lived in that has been like this. All the other homes had closets in every room. I do have a wardrobe in one of the rooms. It is an old heirloom wardrobe that I’m really proud to have. But that’s not where I found my journals. They were upstairs on a shelf behind the clothes. I pulled them out and began to open them. What a treasure. At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read them. I had been through some really difficult times. But I was happily surprised when I began to read. 1997, I wrote about people that didn’t exist and fanciful things about the children and I wrote about what I wanted to accomplish and I shared a little about what was going on but only in the I’m challenged sort of way. I didn’t find one 'woe is me' kind of entry. I didn’t find one thing that someone else did or said to me that was unfair, unkind or atrocious behavior. I was concerned that I was about to revisit a dark and depressing past. But none of that was recorded in them. Only this wild fanciful stuff and lots of encouragement. I probably didn’t write anything when I was depressed. Oh, but I did. Truth is I never knew I was depressed until I was coming out of it. It’s like the sky is dark and dreary and you are used to it being that way and you don’t really notice. Then one day a hole in the clouds appear and you can see some sky. It is unbelievable the color of the sky. And you recognize that you have been depressed, and think it is over now, and you tell everyone how great you are doing and you don’t even notice that the hole is covered up again but you treasure that glimpse of blue sky in your memory while gray darkness surrounds you. I began to read my journals. There was this thread running through them. I wrote about how much I had written or not. I wrote about my tiredness and that I was thankful for a moment to write. I wrote huge character sketches about people I knew and people I made up. I wrote about stuff that the kids were doing. Situations that made for great writing prompts. I began stories and stopped, later in the same journal or in another one I found the same story only different and much better. I didn’t complain in my journals. Everything I wrote about my circumstances, if I wrote about them at all, was about my plan. I challenged myself on paper to make positive changes. But mostly I wrote stories. I still don’t see any point in complaining or even saying how it is if it isn’t nice. Unless it could be turned into a story. I usually won’t focus on anything that does not already have a solution. I’m so glad I did not write a lot of negative things. I wrote about books I was writing and picture books I wanted to write and illustrate. I wrote about a course I was taking about writing for children. I wrote some of those exercises in my journals. I found a treasure. I found aliens from galaxies you have never heard of. I found stories about my childhood that were brave and exciting. I found stories about my son when he was a child and my beautiful daughters. There was a sea dragon who helped a child overcome. There were real stories about the things that we experienced. I wouldn’t want to go back in time and read only the bad stuff. I went back twenty years and I was delighted. I am still writing. When I read those journals I knew for sure I was meant to be an author. I knew that more than anything I want to write. This is my passion. And my journals confirm that. Complaining is a way to keep negativity in your life and seek company in it. I can use the experiences I’ve had in my writing. Experiences are gold to a writer. Why complain about too much gold? If I weren’t a writer I would still not want to focus on the negatives unless I’m working out the solution. In that case I would be focusing on the solution and the situation would merely be a tool to an improvement. It’s not that I have never complained, but I didn’t complain in my journals. I focused on the positives. If there weren’t any available positives in my life at the time, or I couldn’t see them, then I wrote about other stuff. I think that if you want your life to change for the better then you need to focus on the good. Cultivate good thoughts, good habits and smile a lot. Have some clean funny thoughts and smile to yourself. Write those funny thoughts down and other fun stuff. Things will start to change. You will rise to the challenges you face. Don’t record the horror and despair that’s in your life. Only record beauty and blessing. Don’t talk about the unfair stuff happening to you. Don’t focus on how awful the weather is. Talk about that funny thought you had. Talk about a beautiful discovery you made. Tell someone else how cool they are. Don’t even ruin their day with tales of how awful something or someone is. Don’t ruin your day with it either and definitely don’t ruin your poor journals’ day. I’m so glad I didn’t.

Elizabeth Williams 1,000 words a day.