Tag: diary keeping

Personal Reflection

Life in the Time of Covid

I’ve been wanting to update this blog for months, but life just keeps getting more complicated by the day! I decided it’s time to snatch a few moments on my lunch break and see what I can accomplish.

My focus has shifted a bit. Right now, I’m really focused on my health (emotional and spiritual as well as physical). Part of that has been accomplished by working constantly at improving my house and the property around it. I’ll talk more about my home improvement projects in future posts.

I’ve also taken the step to get a dog to keep me company in the Covid isolation. Her name is Sable, and she’s a rescue from a kill shelter in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Beyond that, I can only speculate about her story. I think she’s maybe 2 years old, and I think her previous owners abused her. She’s got a ton of phobias I’ve been working her through, and the transformation has been amazing!

Grinning dog being petted
Sable loves belly rubs, arm scratches, and snout strokes. This picture was taken the day she was adopted!

Well, that’s enough of a life update for now. More later!

Personal Reflection

Journal Keeping

There have been many moments in life that have knocked me back onto my heels so hard, I couldn’t find words to talk about it, no less write about it. Sometimes it has been grief that has kept me from being able to put it on paper (or a screen). Sometimes its a feeling of being completely unworthy of being read, usually after someone said something to me to that effect.

On the other hand, I am a writer at heart, so trying to bottle up the words makes me feel like–well, exploding. You can’t just stop being who you are.

The best solution I’ve found for such a situation  is to keep a journal. I’m learning it helps me work through a lot of things without having to beat a topic to death in conversation (and yes, I have done that).

It also seems like I get truth out on paper better than I can by talking. Something between the conception of an idea and the action of writing it out longhand on a page makes ideas and conclusions solidify into something more concrete. I don’t get the same effect from talking.

On the topic of diary keeping, I have a funny confession to make. I couldn’t write openly in a diary for over two decades of my life, because I had this morbid fear that anything I wrote in a diary would outlive me, perhaps as a humiliating legacy. This led to a lot of self-censorship, and I think it delayed healing at times.

I guess I’m still not past self-censorship on many topics, but since I started my latest journal earlier this year, I’ve been purposefully writing about the stuff that bothers me. This has changed the journaling experience into a part of my prayer life, with significant results. I would recommend this to anyone.

How about you? Do you have any tips for keeping a diary as a part of your prayer life?