thirty-nine memories (31)

Memory #31: Three Pages a Week

When I was fifteen and a sophomore in Mrs. Yoder’s English class, I started to keep a journal. Not because I thought it would be good to keep a journal or because I had a lot to say. I did it because it was an assignment. Mrs. Yoder made us write three pages a week, every week, all year in a little spiral steno notebook. There were no other requirements for the journal. You just had to write three pages a week about anything you wanted to write about.

I will be thirty-nine years old next week, and I have been writing in notebooks (sometimes in notebook computers, but more often in notebooks) for twenty-five years. It is a habit that borders on obsession.

You got bonus credit in Mrs. Yoder’s class if you wrote more than three pages a week. For most of the weeks during the past twenty-five years, I would have gotten a lot of bonus points.

I would thank Mrs. Yoder, if I knew where she was. I wonder whether any of her other students took the gift she gave us–the gift of habitual journaling–and ran with it as I have.

Old journals sit in a big box in my basement office, piles of them.

And just today, while writing in my journal, I figured out what to do with them.