Yesterday, December 9th, was decreed by writer Patrick Rhone, to forever be known as Journal Day. It’s a day for people who keep journals to reflect on the past and for them to try to spread the infection, er, encourage those who don’t keep journals to start keeping them.

One of his suggestions is that people look back through their journals and wheeze, gasp, feel sick and get depressed (aka “reflect on the past as recorded in the journal”).

I dug through the piles of stuff in the variety room and decided to revisit my confusion journal. This is not always a good idea as it’s a bit like taking off the bandage and snipping out the sutures to see inside the wound “just because”. However, this year I didn’t have my normal (more or less) depressed October and I decided to go back and review what past entries have been about. Except for October, I don’t see any patterns, but this recent October was warmer and less rainy than usual so maybe it’s a weather related issue.

Now that it’s getting colder and darker I’ll probably find out.

Another part of Journal Day is for journal writers to encourage the people who don’t keep journals to keep them. In the past, as part of Christmas, I’ve given our girls blank books. and required that they do some sort of daily entry (which, until this blog became a daily event, was totally a case of “do what I say and shut up”–see this link again.)

This went well for about a year and a half until I felt they’d developed the habit. I haven’t checked in a while, though, so I’m not sure if they’ve been keeping up on their journals this year (I’m 90% certain our oldest has not, unless Twitter counts as a journal). This coming Christmas I think I’m going to encourage a different kind of journal idea–one more project based–but as the only parent interested in such things I’ll have to do all the follow up myself.

Whatever happens, it’s a chance for me to visit various stationers and see what the latest products are. That’s the other fun part of Journal Day.