Journals

When I was 7, I remember writing in my Charlie's Angels spiral notebook. Not that I really wanted to but my parents insisted that each Sunday afternoon us kids (at least those old enough to write) would write about 3 days during the previous week. I did this with a lot of grumbling. It wasn't until a couple of years later that it turned into a habit, but not because I chose to but because of sheer competition. The deal was sealed the day my older brother came home and told me he'd been writing in his journal every day for the past 2 years. Determination got the better of me and I wrote in my journal every day from the time I was about 10 until the winter after I turned 21. That winter was a very depressing time and I remember thinking "Why do I write in the silly journal? No one will care to ever read this."

So just like that I stopped. For years. Unfortunately, those were the years that I bought my first car, graduated college, sent a and returned brother from a mission, got married, built a home, started a business with my husband, and had 3.5 kids. As you can tell it's only been the last couple of years that I picked up the habit again. But I tend to go in spurts. A really busy time will make for a lot of journal writing so I get behind and then have to play catch-up, but I'm desperately trying to at least hit the highlights.

Days like today though will keep up my enthusiasm for journal keeping. This afternoon I dug through my old journals to find the race results from when I was on a track team when I was 10 and 11 years old. Back then I could run 200 meters in 31.6 seconds, a 400 meter in 1 minute 18 seconds and jump 10' 6" in the long jump. At that time, I wasn't that fast. I usually got 2nd place or worse. But now that I'm running longer distances I converted that 400 meter time to a 5:33 minute mile. That's a fast mile!

Of course, my competitiveness is getting the better of me and I'm sure that I'll have to run an all out 400 meter in the next week just to see how fast I can do it now.