Our world, our lives, continues to change.
  Even if you don’t pay attention, there is change, but if you pay attention you can more easily adapt to the results and ramifications.
  I make a point of trying to track changes as I see and feel them. I write it all down, as it happens, in my journal. Journaling has become a habit, or necessity, for the past couple of decades. Writing it out help me make sense of it all.
  I write, pretty much, every day. I have consistently, certainly for the past 21 days, addressed what is happening with me; that’s what my journal is all about ME and everything and everyone around me, as WE go through this life; and especially this brand new decade.
  Twenty-one days has been enough to refresh, or reinvigorate, this habit of mine, and it has become a practice for a lot of other people as well.
  I just finished up soulalk’s VISION 2020, an online guided journaling workshop. I offer these workshops off and on, and this time was supremely impressed with the participation and input from participants. It is both interesting and inspiring to see and read what people are thinking about.
  There was a great deal of soul searching and support. The time together was important. I am thankful for the experience.
  I probably wrote more than I usually do over the three weeks. I began the month, the year (the decade), with five brand new pencils and now a few are little more than stumps. In addition to the daily prompts, I wrote about the changes I, and the rest of the world, was experiencing.
  I wrote every day about everything that seemed important at the time. That is what a journal does, or allows you to do. It keeps a running record of where you are on this journey called life. You write it out.
  With a journal, it matters not so much what you write, but only that you do.
  Write.
  Write every damn day.
  Sometimes it is only a sentence. Other times it is simply a word. A day.
  You write.
  Maybe you only write the date, but you should always write the date, because if that is all you write — if that is all you could write — you will know, looking back, that you were alive on that date.
  On that day, you know you had the courage to write it down, even if that date is the only thing you wrote.
  Maybe nothing happened that day, or maybe, on that day, you did not want to write down all that was happening. Maybe you didn’t have the time, or perhaps you didn’t have the courage or the will, but you knew what date it was (some dates are like that).
  Some days it is only a sentence.
  Some days that sentence is a word. Some words are like that.
  Some days are like that.
  Some days you are not feeling it, or you feel too much, so you just write down the date; it may lead to something else.
  Every day, every word, is a part of something bigger and you are greater than all of that, even if you don’t write it down.
  But you should always write down the date.
  A date will remind you that you are alive; after that nothing else matters, but everything counts.
  Write it down when you can, when it matters.
  Make it matter.
  A journal is always there for you.

© 2020 j.g. lewis