Working On Me

I have written before about how and why to journal and how to sustain your writing once you have started. But a question on a forum made me consider another angle recently: what happens when you have neglected your journal for a period and want to restart? Perhaps you entered a busy period and your journal fell by the wayside, or perhaps you just lost interest. For whatever reason, you want to make a fresh start.

The thought of cataloguing all that has gone on since you stopped recording your life is likely to be daunting and may put you off starting again. But you can’t just launch in again as if nothing has happened either. What I suggest is this:

1. Take a blank sheet of paper – not a page in your journal.
2. Divide the sheet into sections by drawing lines. If it’s been just a few months since you stopped, then each space represents a month. If it’s been years, each space represents a year.
3. Write the names of the months or the years in each space and then write one or two bullet points of notable events from that month or year. Don’t add any detail – just use a word or two or a memory trigger.
4. Tuck the completed sheet in your journal.

Now, start writing in your journal again regularly. Once a week (or whenever you feel like it, or have the time), pick one of your months or years and write up the events as you remember them. As you record your memories, cross them off on the sheet. Before long, there will be nothing left on the sheet and you will be back to journaling in the normal way.