This January, determined to regain some of the journal-writing prowess of my younger days, I bought a One-Line-a-Day Memory Book. “I can manage one line a day. Piece of cake,” I told myself as I clicked on the “One-click-to-buy” Amazon button. Well, we are now 34 days into 2012 and I have managed only one line in the memory book.
It’s not the time investment that’s stopping me. One line is a piece of cake to write. Until it’s the line that’s supposed to summarize all of my feeling, thoughts, and actions of a day. How do I give a day justice in just one line?
Plenty of nights I look at that blue book sitting there on my nightstand next to my alarm clock, all shiny in its newness, and try to compose an entry in my mind. Take last Sunday, for example. Do I write about the mix of different emotions that accompanied getting sustained in my new calling on Sunday? Or do I write about dancing around the kitchen with my husband and kids after dinner? Or maybe I write about how, at bedtime, as I was singing a song to my 2-year-old, he turned to me with his overly puckered lips and smacked continual kisses on my cheek until the song was over? Which memory trumps the others for the one-line-a-day? Or take last Wednesday. Can I write, “Busy with the same old, same old”? Because to actually record that the “same old, same old” means doing 7 loads of laundry, fixing 3 meals and countless snacks, cleaning up those snacks, sweeping the floor a bajillion times because I can’t stand to feel goldfish and Cheerios crunch under my bare feet, taking 8-year-old to basketball, reminding both older kids to practice their piano, helping 8-year-old study for his comprehension test, harping on 6-year-old to pick up her 4 pairs of shoes I keep tripping on before I pick them up and she has to pay me her allowance to get them back, and cleaning up the entire contents of the apple juice the 2-year-old spilled all over the floor, won’t all fit on that one little line.
The truth is, I’m not cut out for one-line-a-day conciseness. My husband says he knows this. When he calls to ask about my day, I can’t give a one line answer. But the memory book has helped me remember why it is that I can’t. (Other than I’m just not a concise person—no tweeting in my future!) It’s helped me remember that, most days, there are more thankful, memorable details and moments than I would have thought, and that what I do every day is valuable and worthy of mention.
So what about you? How do you record your memories? Do you even feel the need to? What works or doesn’t work for you? What would you do in a one-line-a-day journal—summarize your day, choose one detail to record—one feeling or one event? Try it now, if you’d like: write your one-line-a-day for your day so far!
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