Hand_written_diary

When I look back at my blog, it reveals more about my feelings than any journal I've ever kept. I can tell when I was feeling light-hearted or when politics have had me riled up. When I write about my (grown) kids it is usually a reflection of when I'm missing them. My dear sweet Mom reads every post and I put little messages to her in here and try not to cuss. I'm honest about my mental health. Sometimes I vent my frustrations from work, or you know, people.

Every time I have ever tried to keep a journal, it's quickly devolved into nothing more than just a daily narrative - when I got up, what I did at work, what I did in the evening. I always start off thinking I'll inject some emotion into it, something that future me will read with admiration. It just never happens. I've used the great journaling app, Day One, since 2014, but it is more of a digital scrapbook into which I funnel photographs, social media posts, books, movies and TV shows watched and news stories. It's fun to maintain and look through, but I don't get much of a clue about how past me felt on all those days unless one of the photos conjures up a memory.

Before I started this blog, I'd had two stints of writing for other people behind me. One was back in the 90s before we had social media. I used to write essays and include them in our family email chain. I've republished a couple of them here and here. The email chain petered out and most of the writing I did for the next decade was technical in nature.

In 2013, my wife and I hiked the Appalachian Trail on a five-month honeymoon. I used an iPhone 5 to write a blog entry every night in our tent or whatever hostel we happened to be in with pictures and details from the day's journey. I thought about continuing it when we got home, but going back to work and a lack of spectacular views and adventure extinguished that flame.

These days. I average about 1,000 words a day. I write about anything I feel like for most of that, although I dedicate some time to my hobby of writing app reviews. I went through my first hundred days and created a list of blogging prompts, which several people have amazingly taken and completed 50 or more of their own posts from.

Last week, I celebrated the one-year anniversary of my first blog post in my re-entry into the world of personal bloggers. I didn't start the crazy post something every day thing until March. I've written for my blog during a hurricane. I kept it going through a camping trip with five of my grandchildren. More than a few posts have been pecked out on my phone during road trips and airplane flights. I am much more dedicated to talking to y'all than I ever was writing for myself. Thankfully, I have an open-book personality. I'm not guarded about much. My life has been messy and imperfect, but I've done some fun stuffand some hard stuff and ended up pretty happy for the most part. For me it would be harder not to write about my life than it would be to conceal every wart.

Thanks for reading.

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