2023 Goals

Hello FTT, a working memoir writing posted this piece on using, keeping, and destroying journals.

Thought of you.

Thank you Revu2. I can relate to her writing obsessively & repetitively. I think that’s part of the reason I accumulated so many notebooks. I used to fill 2 or 3 a year. When I lost my housing in 2016, I threw all the old journals away. It was a relief.

November update:

1) I finished one homemade sketchbook and I was so pleased with the results that I started making a second. I have yet to start using it though. A family member was so impressed, they wanted to show their friend. I thought of another idea for using up a notebook: a personal poetry anthology. I got that idea from a book I read.

2) I signed the signature cards at my bank to finalize the process of adding my siblings as beneficiaries. One of my siblings said they were “flattered” and I thought to myself: well, it’s not like I have other choices… I noticed my siblings are now “liking” more of my Facebook posts too. I thought that was interesting. I also got a copy of my birth certificate to the tune of 64 bucks through the state.

My wife and I reached out to an attorney to do the estate plan. We're stuck on naming an Executor. Our daughter would have no capacity to do it, and most of my relatives are older than me or too distant.

December wrap up:
1) I’m now down to 48 notebooks, sketchbooks, tablets, & journals. 1 homemade scratch paper 3”x5” book I recycled. 6 9”x12” sketchbooks I consolidated into 2 6”x9” 236 page, bound sketchbooks I love. I used up one spiral notebook as an insomnia journal. Then I was regifted a guided wellness journal at Xmas. So, the grand total is: 5 down from the beginning of the year.
2) Taxes were finished in April, yippee!
3) Death binder is a work in progress, needing about 10 things I have written down in my dot journal I’m too lazy to rewrite here.

In conclusion, this was a helpful thread for me I plan to do again.

@FloatThruThis you are truly an inspiration

Aw, thank you!

Hi FTT, I have discovered a similar goal for myself for this year: Keep random sheets and papers in a binder marked with the year. It's a calendar, reminder, scrapbook, & journal all rolled into one. I'll just put them in as they arrive.

This is a slight shift from the "piling" style where flat surfaces catch everything, to more of a "filing" style. Keeping my sights low and close for now to test how this works.

Good luck. It sounds like a great system. Let us know how it goes.

I'm a long-time user of the "piling" system. (I like that name -- very clever). Fortunately, I have very little paper coming in to the house. I've moved to e-statements for nearly everything except receipts.

Hi SPG, I can't claim this distinction as my one. For a while I immersed myself in decluttering (before my career demanded more of my available time and then some). Some of the expert gurus used that idea and it fit well to how I operate.

My partner has similar piling tendencies, so we struggle with what's called the earth plane [flat surfaces] in Feng Shui. If I really wanted to apply FS in full I could probably do it, but the process would drive me nuts. I'd have to check myself into the psych ward.

Here's the thing: I grew up with this pattern, too! Without planning or any thinking, I learned to clear a space and do what I needed in the clearing. When done, the cleared space would fill-in again.

Hm. I have a ritual of a series of enriched self-sayings I'd like to run now. The format is to state a declarative sentence. Then add "part of myself ..." after the nouns, and "I am having myself ..." before the verbs. It was taught to my dream study group by Henry Reed, a dream explorer. The hardest part is what sentence to start with.

Once I start, I won't let myself stop. There's no room anyway for all these echoes and copies and reminders. I let them go to feel my sacred spaces grow. [riff off the poem What to Save by MJ Werthman White]

I am having my intentional part of myself start clearing the earth plane parts of myself. I am stopping myself from stopping this processing of my self. I have in myself no room anyway for the echoes, reminders, and copies from a self I no longer need to carry. I am having myself let these parts of myself go so that I can enjoy my inner self sensing the beautiful and sacred spaces within me and without.

Hi, just dashed through TTW's "When Women were Birds." It opens with her mother giving her permission to read all her journals. As a Mormon wife she had 2 duties, having children and keeping a journal to hand down to her daughters. Who would keep journals.

Her mom died on the full moon. On the next full moon, TTW, finding herself alone, decided to open up the journals. They took up a whole bookcase.

The first was blank, then the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, ... shelf after shelf ... they all were blank.

And I think somewhere in the after life her mom had a big after laugh.