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My birthday was this past Wednesday. Like most people, I spent a little time around the day, when I wasn’t enjoying extra coffee and the best brownie ever, reflecting on the past year of my life. And it’s been an interesting one. Some ups and downs, both personally and professionally. I’ve grown some and learned a lot. There have been better years of my life, for sure. But by God, there have been far worse.
I enjoy having the ability to look back on the past year. Memory keeping isn’t a huge part of my life, but it’s still important.
Here’s the thing, though. I don’t keep a journal. Frankly, on top of all the other writing I do in a day, it’s too much. And while I take pictures, I don’t often get them printed. I don’t scrapbook, though I do like it in theory.
Record keeping is something that takes time. And time is something most of us just don’t have a lot of. It’s often something we do for holidays, birthdays, and vacations, but not so much on an everyday basis. I mean, who’s got that kind of time, right?
But the regular days hold so much joy. It’s on average Tuesdays when we find a new book series that will become our whole personality for the next three months. It’s a common Thursday when the dog finds the bag of flour and makes himself the cutest ghost ever. The creative breakthrough, the new coffee shop, the cozy rainy afternoons, the really good talk with your partner. These are things that I want to remember just as much as what we did for my birthday.
So today, I want to share with you four things I do to collect memories daily. They aren’t large things, they don’t take up a lot of time. But they create a net that traps the everyday memories that I treasure looking back on.
Bullet journaling
Most of you know that I keep a bullet journal. Mostly this is to keep myself organized and my plants alive. But it also catches memories. I have a page every month dedicated to recording the best memories. Here I’ll track big events, of course, but also little things. When I discovered the musical Six. When the power went out in our little city.
Even my everyday to-do list in my bullet journal tracks some memories. Looking back I can see exactly how long I struggled with a short story. When I went through a big cleaning phase and cleared out a ton of house tasks. When I had to run every errand known to man in a single day. These are fun things to look back in, even if they weren’t fun at the time.
Notes on a perpetual calendar
If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen my Peanuts perpetual desk calendar. Because it’s one that I can use year after year, I decided to use it as a mini memory keeper.
On November 15th of 2022, I started writing one sentence about my day on the calendar page. This might be something like, we finished Reboot today. Or, I went to visit my grandma today.
As the days and years go by, I’ll be building on these little notes. So this becomes more and more precious as time goes by.
I post something on Instagram most days. Often it’s pictures of things that made me smile that day. A new plant, a nice sunset, or the cute way Harper curled up next to my book.
Yes, I also post info about my books and blog posts. But even that’s kind of a fun look back. I spent some time on my birthday just looking back at what I’ve posted in the last year. Between this year’s picture of my birthday coffee and last year’s. And I was awash with memories. What I was reading. What I was passionate about. When my one air plant sprouted flowers without warning. A hundred little mini-adventures, snapping silly pictures of dogwood blossoms while running errands.
Now look, I don’t suggest sharing your whole life on social media. And I caution you to remember that Instagram in particular is a highlight reel. But if you do use social media, consider using it in such a way that you’re reminded of good moments when you look back over your account.
Gratitude logs
Finally, this is a practice I’ve used for almost a decade. Every morning I write at least three things I’m thankful for from the day before in my planner.
First off, this is just a good way to start the day. Even if the day before was a hard one, I can at least think of three things I was thankful for. I made a really good cup of coffee. I slept well. I took a shower with a shower bomb and it was nice.
This also has a built-in memory-keeping factor. I keep all of my old planners, of course. And I can look back to any day and be reminded of at least three good things that happened.
And on hard days, I can look back on other hard times. I can see that even at my lowest, I still had things to be thankful for. Hard not to feel good about that.
What about you? What’s your favorite memory-keeping habit? Let us know in the comments.
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