I have always been an avid scrapbooker and amateur photographer and diary keeper. Stowed away in my closet are volumes of journals that document my teegage years: every crush, every hope, every petty grievance with a friend, every question about life and God and the future. About once a year I dig out my journals and page through them, remembering who I used to be. The people I once cared so deeply for. The longings for love of a seventeen year-old. Reading these preserved thoughts sometimes makes me laugh, and sometimes makes me feel sad, but mostly just makes me feel nostalgic. Seeing how my friendships, my beliefs, and my ambitions have evolved reminds that when one chooses a path, she must inevitably forsake another.
I am daily reminded of the fleeting nature of life, and by writing things down and taking pictures of them I feel as though I am making them count. They aren’t slipping away without my noticing.
Steve and I were talking a while back about how a few generations down the line, people may stumble across my dusty diaries and stacks of scrapbooks and just absentmindedly thumb through them, not caring at all about the lives that comprised them, and perhaps just throw them away since they’re cluttering the crawl space. I have always had romanticized notions of my great-granddaughter stumbling across a cedar chest filled with my old keepsakes and she would read them and would feel this deep connection with me, her dearly departed grandmama. Cheesy, I know. But still, I think we’ve all got this desire to make our lives matter somehow, so that even once we’re gone we won’t be forgotten.
What do you do to make your days count?
7 Comments
hmm..what do i do to make my days count? i count them. I have been alive for 9653 days :)
wow, that makes me feel old. i’m approaching 10,000 days!!
I too am an advide diary keeper. Have been my whole life. I too romantisize about my great grand daughter remenising through my journals and sharing my tears and laughter over my life experiences. I guess it is my small way of making my mark on the world.
That’s so true Amanda. Everything you said. I have journals and old love letters from Jordan and the things he said were so cheesy- but back then they melted my heart. So nice to thumb though memories like that.
I do really want to make my life count for something. How to do that … I’m not quite sure. I just try to live every day like I mean it. Spend time with my family, tell them I love them and raise up a wonderful woman who will then make grandbabies for me and they will be wonderful and so on and so on. Did that make sense?
I don’t keep a journal of my life but I do enjoy scrapbooking my girls lives. Another thing I did was a pregnancy calender and 1st year calender for each of them. When Delaney turned one and her calender was done I decided that on each birthday I would write her a letter. So now, on the night of their birthdays I write a letter about their last years achievements, experiences and my feelings as they grow older. I plan to keep these a secret and not let them read the journals until their 18th birthday. I love going back each year and reading how much they have changed.
I look back at my old entries in my diaries with embarassment. I find it a little embarassing the things that I used to write and think about. Did I have to have a crush on every male I ever met??? It does, however, make me feel soooooo thankful for the blessings that God has given me in my husband and my family!
I have old journals too. Though blogging is the only “journal” I keep now. And I take wayyyy too many pictures :)
I dream of my daughter being able to read through my old journals one day too. I’ll have to start that up again so that she’ll have something about married life to read.
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