Tag: Diary

Journal Prompt for Jump-starting Your Diary

Basically, this is my semi-regular reminder that keeping a journal can change your life. Now more than ever I rely on a handwritten diary to give my life context. It’s partly the virus and the way we live now. Partly my fears and confusion about aging and what I mean to do with what’s left of my life. Partly trying to figure out the best way to use my creative ability to make the world a better place. Identity. Infinity. Vocation. Vision. Regret. To be honest, I don’t see how anybody figures this stuff out –  or even makes a stab at it – without a written journal.

These are painful days, and writing out your pain and fear and rage is powerful. It can also be terrifying – some of us are just managing to Hold It All Together by squinching our psychic eyes shut and I understand: admitting this pain (and anger and feelings of helplessness) could be taking a hammer to the dam in our spirits – the one that is holding back despair. Or. It can be a tool. As the earth seems to crumble under you, your writing can be a rope that [read more]

How to Make No-Fail New Year’s Resolutions That Will Change Your Life

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”Annie Dillard, A Writing Life

Making New Year’s Resolutions is a kind of religion for me. I believe in it so much that I make my resolutions at the new year and again at mid-year for tune up. If you are reading this and you think that resolutions are corny or a waste of time, I strongly suspect that no one has ever sugested ways that are meaningful and guarantees success. So give it a chance and join me, won’t you? You are about to change your life.

In my experience, expressing your deepest, wildest dreams, even in a private diary, can feel scary and sometimes even wrong, as in: “Who am I to allow myself to imagine a life this big and gorgeous and successful? And if I write it in my day-to-day journal, what if someone sees it? What if I see it, what if I read it again in a few months and I’ve failed because of course I will and these words will humiliate me because I should know better and…” Sound familiar?

The Burner Journal

Now, you can “kill” your [read more]