The Little Things

I have increasingly realized the importance of the "little" things in life.  Take for instance writing.  It's something everyone does pretty much every day.  And yet realizing how much I've written in the past month, I realized just what this simple activity does for me.  To illustrate, at the beginning of September I had to purchase a new journal because I finally finished my old one.  Looking at it today I realized that in a little less than two months I filled well over 50 pages of the book.  50 pages!  

Now this isn’t at all typical.  I've noticed an increasing pattern.  When I started journal writing oh over about a decade ago (yep, I was ten at the time.  For those of you counting, I only mean I only really started my journals 11 years ago) I wasn’t the most prolific writer.  I loved being creative and writing silly little things in my precious journal.  My first “real” journal spanned over several years and didn’t really cover much of the day-to-day things of my life.  I didn’t want to write down anything I would risk someone else (meaning one of my brothers) reading.  So this little book was filled with tons of entries of little “nothings.”  My second journal again spanned over several years ending if memory serves me correctly my junior year of high school.  

I started a new journal when I went to France the summer of 2007.  I was a fairly naïve sixteen-year-old who was anxious to explore the world.  That summer began the first episode of serious writing, for I didn’t want to forget a single minute of that trip.  I wrote faithfully every day for just over a month.  But, this pattern didn’t last for long.  I quickly forgot about my precious little book and thus this “French” journal lasted me for another three years until I was a freshman at BYU in 2008.

My next journal, the “Otter,” covered my first two years at BYU.  It was at this time that I decided that this was a more important endeavor for me.  That journal was not the happiest of the bunch – despite its cute little cover.  

The next journal, the “Fairy,” spanned only a single year.  This journal represents a lot of change, and yet even though I finished filling those pages feels somewhat incomplete.  Perhaps this feelings persists simply because I it only details one aspect of my life and details a rather incomplete story. 

Now onto my current journal—the sixth that I’ve kept over the last 21 years of my life.  I’m already almost a third of the way through this book and I’ve only had it over a month.  What does this mean?  Perhaps simply that I’m writing a lot more.  Writing is certainly a saving grace for me.  This also represents just what has changed in my life in just the past two months since I moved out to Michigan.

Moving out to Michigan was neither the hardest or easier choice I ever had to make.  The hardest choice will forever remain stark in my mind; the easiest are soon forgotten as the next easy choice is placed before me.  The Michigan move was certainly a significant choice and I don’t even now understand the full ramifications of it—if I ever will.  I just know I’ve been thinking about what I want in life a lot and I realize where I am meant to be going and I want a record of how I’ve changed.

The last two months had both the significant ups and downs and frankly I love basically every minute of it.  Without the bad, I certainly wouldn’t be able to appreciate the good.  I have been writing a lot more in general – including all of my little fictional applications of life.   Over the last few years I have certainly written an increasingly amount – I have well over 400 pages of material to testify of that.    I have much left to learn and I’m more than willing to embrace that journey, it’s just interesting to see how much things have changed over the years.