by Deborah Globus
Today I started my annual reading of my
journal entries from the year before.
journal entries from the year before.
I’ve already discovered something important: May is never, ever a good month for me.
When you reread what you’ve written over the years, patterns begin to emerge.
One of the first patterns I recognized was that I binge read every July.
The year we moved in I read all four Game of Thrones books between June and August; the year my father died I read all four Twilight books in under two weeks.
Along with that recognition was the recognition that I felt guilty about it every, single year.
That made me stop. If this was something I was doing year after year, perhaps I had to look at it in a different way. It was a leap of faith to even consider that maybe the pattern was something worthwhile. Maybe – because it happened year after year, always the same time – maybe it served a purpose.
And if it did serve some purpose, if it was necessary (even if I couldn’t see why) then maybe I could let go of the guilt.
Instead, I built in time for binge reading and life is so much better because of it. I can relax into my own personal, natural patterns instead of fighting against them. It’s awesome!
That's the realizations on day one of reading last year’s journals.
Knowing that May isn’t a good month means that I can make better choices next year.
I can make sure I don’t commit to anything other than the barest minimum.
I can look into ways of supporting myself.
People ask why I go to the trouble of rereading what I’ve written. I do it because in spite of writing it all down I have a painfully short memory and an astounding inability to see my own patterns.
But I’m really good at catching the insights as they come. Reading through my old journals helps the lessons to stick a little better, and in the end that’s why I keep the journal in the first place.
The year we moved in I read all four Game of Thrones books between June and August; the year my father died I read all four Twilight books in under two weeks.
Along with that recognition was the recognition that I felt guilty about it every, single year.
That made me stop. If this was something I was doing year after year, perhaps I had to look at it in a different way. It was a leap of faith to even consider that maybe the pattern was something worthwhile. Maybe – because it happened year after year, always the same time – maybe it served a purpose.
And if it did serve some purpose, if it was necessary (even if I couldn’t see why) then maybe I could let go of the guilt.
Instead, I built in time for binge reading and life is so much better because of it. I can relax into my own personal, natural patterns instead of fighting against them. It’s awesome!
That's the realizations on day one of reading last year’s journals.
Knowing that May isn’t a good month means that I can make better choices next year.
I can make sure I don’t commit to anything other than the barest minimum.
I can look into ways of supporting myself.
People ask why I go to the trouble of rereading what I’ve written. I do it because in spite of writing it all down I have a painfully short memory and an astounding inability to see my own patterns.
But I’m really good at catching the insights as they come. Reading through my old journals helps the lessons to stick a little better, and in the end that’s why I keep the journal in the first place.
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