Mining my Journals

I've started writing about home renovations here.

What do home renovations have to do with journals? Well, since we worked in every room at one point or another, we had to empty every room and look at what we would put back in every room.

I've been keeping journals for over 20 years. Some are daily musings, some are records of trips, some are related to classes, retreats or writing books, and some are miscellaneous. I would probably keep every journal if I had a large storage area. Since I don't, I occasionally read through them, saving pages that are somehow relevant or meaningful to me, and tossing the rest.

This time around, I've read through about four journals. Frankly, they're a bunch of drivel. I found nothing worth saving.

If an outside observer were to read my journals, he or she would think I was unhappy. Pages are filled with lists of things to do, things I didn't do, things I should have done. The negative pages outnumber the positive.

But I don't remember these days as unhappy.

The main reason is that many of my journals are modeled on Julia Cameron's morning pages. She often describes these as brain drains. By getting frustrations out on the page, they may not mess up the rest of your life.  

I still hope to find something---an idea, image or phrase worth saving--worth mining.