write in my paper journal every day for a month

I missed a day two weekends ago when Adam and I went to our friends’ house for the day and didn’t come home until the next morning. And then I skipped writing that day, and the day after that, and, if I recall, two more days after that. Sheesh. To be fair, I was working on a short story during most of those missed days. But I’m back on track again, and I’ve written every day since September 8. I’ve written 70 pages of journal entries since the beginning of August.

I’m in the midst of another streak - nine days this time. I’m trying to get in the habit of writing in the early evening - say, the 20 minutes before dinner—instead of waiting until 11 PM and risking falling asleep on the couch without having written anything.

I love the accomplishment I feel after writing just a few pages every day, though. It helps my other writing (fiction, Livejournal, essays) so much in that I’m able to spew forth my mental clutter into a totally private forum. I get out a lot of my misgivings and celebrations about the writing process in my private journal so that I’m free to not write about writing when I’m trying to create a more “serious” piece. Even once I’ve finished this goal, I’m sure I’ll keep on writing in my paper journal nearly every day. I finished my huge 5-subject notebook at the end of July, and I’m already 50 pages into one of my blank books (well, formerly blank). People love to give me blank books as gifts. I’m glad I’m finally going to be using them all.

The good news is that I’m still writing more in my journal than I have since I was 15 and had a lot of gushing to do about the various victims of my high school affection.

The bad news is that every time I start a streak of entries going, something happens to keep me from getting up to 30 days in a row. If something throws me off my usual weekday schedule, I’m liable to forget to write an entry for the day. Perhaps the solution would be to write in the morning instead of at night, but I’d be very limited in terms of time, which would mean most of my entries would be something along the lines of, “Eating breakfast. Gotta get ready for work!” Writing at night at least gives me the time to write what I want.

I missed writing an entry yesterday because, by the time I got home from work, I had been awake for 36 hours, and, well, that kind of thing just makes you forget to pick up your journal. I wrote an entry today, though, at a coffee shop. I guess I’ll just keep working on this until I can finally get it right.

After thirteen straight days of entries, I forgot to write yesterday.

Back to the beginning—again.

Without saying anything else, I shall just note that this goal is going quite well.

I forgot to write yesterday. And I had plenty of time to write, too, what with my only two activities all day being a 10K road race in the early morning, and dinner at my parents’ house in the late afternoon. Well, onward to the beginning of a new writing streak. I wrote three pages this evening, and I’ll probably write tomorrow’s entry in the morning. Let’s see if I can keep this streak going until August 5.

I’ve written an entry in my paper journal every day since the 26th of June. Yep, I’m on a seven-day streak! I don’t want to jinx myself, so I won’t say much more about this right now, but I’m definitely feeling that I’m making a habit of writing in there every day. Often, I sit down with the notebook, promising that I’ll write “just a few sentences,” and find that I actually have several pages’ worth of sentences to write.

I’ll be so glad to fill the last page of my increasingly unwieldly five-subject notebook that I’ve been using as a paper journal since May of 2003. I’ve used it as a lazy girl’s scrapbook, stuffing all sorts of maps and brochures and newspaper clippings into its pockets, and now the thing’s so heavy that I can’t usually take it with me when I travel anymore.

Anyway, as of last night’s journal entry, I have about sixty pages left to write before I can begin a more compact journal. I haven’t been writing every day, but I’ve been good about writing a few times a week. I think I’m on a three-day streak of entries, though, so we’ll see how long I can keep going from here.

Looking at my paper journal yesterday, I realized I’ve been writing in it for nearly 3 years—since May 23, 2003. It’s a huge, heavy 5-subject notebook and I’m tired of carrying it around. I couldn’t take it on our trip to Vancouver last week because it would have weighed down my suitcase too much (not so much that it would have gone over the weight limit, but enough to make it annoying to wheel around). I used to finish an old journal and start a new journal every year on my birthday, and I think I’d like to start that up again. Plus, it’ll be nicer to have a smaller, lighter journal that I can take with me when I travel.

So. As of yesterday, I had 105 pages left in the journal, and 19 days until my birthday. Basically, I need to write a little over 5 pages a day to finish the journal by the time I turn 26. And then I can finally start a new journal. And I’ll be pretty close to reaching this goal of writing in a paper journal every day for a month.

Speaking of which, I need to finish today’s five-ish pages. Only a page or so to go.

I was doing really well on this during the first week of January. Then, life got in the way and my journal got moved to the bottom of a bookshelf and played the out of sight, out of mind game with me. Tomorrow’s a new month, so that seems like a good time to start writing entries in there again, even if they’re just a few paragraphs (actually, even a few pages would be a short entry for me).